Crossing the Line - A Sea Story

Author's Note: This is a submission for the 2025 On the Job event. This is a longer story, novella length, and a bit of a slow burn but I hope that won't deter you and you'll find it worth the read. Thanks to all of my friends and colleagues who pitched in to give me advice on the finer details of sailing on big ships, and any errors are mine, not theirs. Finally, a big shoutout to the unsinkable PennyThompson, my one and only beta reader, who stuck with this through 5k increments and helped make the story even better than I could have on my own. Go check Penny out and give a follow!

I hope you enjoy the trip!

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Norfolk, Virginia

28 March 2025

1815 hours (6:15 PM EDT)

First day of voyage

"Would you look at that?" Ashley told me, her voice filled with awe.

I followed her gaze, taking in the massive container ship that rose above us like a towering giant. It looked like it had seen better days -- the light blue paint on the hull was flaking off in a variety of places, and there were rust stains trailing down the hawseholes. The ship was riding high in the water, and we could see containers being loaded onto her from the shore cranes.

"She looks like an old piece of shit," I remarked to Ash, sniffing. The Cleveland wasn't an ancient ship, strictly speaking. She was built in 2007, which made her eighteen years old -- the average age of most container ships was about fourteen years, but the Cleveland was an American ship, and we tend to run our ships longer than most other flags. She had at least a few more years left in her, but I'd heard this class of ship tended to start falling apart after year ten. She was small - she only carried around 6400 containers - I didn't like the rust, and I was generally in a bad mood. I tended to be sour at the start of a voyage. At least, since last year. Fear of the unknown, I guess.

"Oh, she does not," Ashley retorted, looking at me out of the side of her eye. "Just because she's half the size of your daddy's ship doesn't mean she's a piece of shit," she told me. "Not everybody can run the newest, biggest ships in the fleet."

"She's a third the size of Daddy's ship, and please don't mention that when we get aboard, okay? I don't need any repeats of last year," I warned her.

Ash smiled at me sweetly. "Aye aye, ma'am, anything you say, ma'am," she said, snapping off a smart salute, right hand to the brim of her blue Merchant Marine ballcap.

"Don't do that shit, either," I grumbled.

"You're in a mood today," she laughed, as we made our way towards the gangway. "Wake up on the wrong side of the bunk?"

"I've heard a little about this ship," I told her. "Nothing good, honestly. I don't need a repeat of last year," I told her, for the second time.

"Yeah, yeah, I get it," Ashley replied, a hint of exasperation finding its way into her voice. "I was there too, remember?"

"How could I forget?" I mumbled. Bad memories of my first time on a ship, the looks I got when people found out my father was a ship's captain, my mother a Navy Rear Admiral, were still fresh. The most annoying part was my dad didn't even work for the same company as that ship's captain, but they still knew each other, and I had to live with two solid months of "teacher's pet" and "nepo baby" bullshit from the rest of the crew. My Dad DID work for this company, though, and I was dreading the crew finding out. If last year had been bad, this year could be even worse.

I wanted to sink or swim on my own merit. Ashley and I were going to be on this ship and others like it for nearly nine months, the capstone to my 2C -- the equivalent of junior year - at the Merchant Marine Academy. The program was called 'Sea Year,' and it was critical to our success as future merchant mariners. It could be a fun adventure, or it could be a floating hell. Determining which one - fun or hell - would likely come down to what happened in the next twenty-four hours, at least as far as the Cleveland was concerned.

I'd be living, working, learning my profession, and (maybe) relaxing for at least the next two months on this ship, and I didn't want to feel everybody's eyes on me. Naive, I know. But I just didn't want to be treated differently from anybody else. It was bad enough being female in a heavily male profession, and bad enough being gay surrounded by straight men who rarely saw women for months at a time or saw them as anything more than someone you spent time with on shore. There were some men in this industry who just hated the idea of women being on ships period. I was prepared to deal with all of that. What I didn't want to deal with was everyone walking on eggshells all the time because of who my parents were.

Ash and I made our way up the gangway, where we were met by one of the third mates, a small, squirrelly looking guy named Harry who didn't add anything to my estimation of the ship. He directed us to the captain's cabin. Ten minutes later, we were standing in front of his office door, our sea bags on the deck beside us, waiting to gain entry.

"Reporting for duty, sir," I told the captain after we knocked and were granted admittance. The captain's cabin was a large affair, with a bedroom, bathroom, and day room that functioned as an office. Ashley stood next to me, and we both waited to see what kind of reception we'd get from the captain.

"Welcome aboard," he told us. He was sitting at his desk, a stack of paperwork in his hands. "I'm Stephen Lawrence," he said, reaching out a hand to me. I shook it. He was tall, well-built, middle-aged with a salt-and-pepper beard and short, gray hair that was parted down the side. He wore a white uniform shirt, epaulettes with four gold stripes on the shoulders, and a pair of black trousers, impeccably creased. It was surprisingly formal, but I knew that's what this company expected in port. His face, at least the part not covered in bristly hair, was bronzed by the sun. I could see the crow's feet that were endemic to merchant mariners, caused by hours of squinting at the horizon with the sun in his eyes. The skin tone and the wrinkles made his face seem both familiar, like Dad's, and experienced. This was the first thing I'd seen that made me think this ship and this voyage might not be all that bad. I looked over at Ash and she had a tight grin on her face. I could tell she liked him, too. I was going to have my hands full with her on this trip.

I had specifically not asked Dad about the Cleveland, because I didn't want him to ask questions and cause me problems. All the scuttlebutt I'd picked up had been from other midshipmen at King's Point, including a pair of friends who had just come off the ship a month earlier.

"I'm Meredith Madsen," I told him. "I usually go by Mer."

Mer. Daddy had started calling me that as a baby. Mer was French for "sea," and I think that was probably why he'd been okay with Mom choosing my name. Fitting name for a girl who'd been born on a ship, after all.

"I'm Ashley Hinton," Ash told him. She held out her hand, and he shook it in turn. "Everybody calls me Ashley," she said, with a friendly smile. I looked at her sideways. I'd been calling her Ash for three years now. She looked back at me and shrugged.

The sides of his mouth twitched up at this. "Ah, yes. Midshipman Madsen is our future third mate, and you're our future third engineer, is that right?"

"Yes, sir," we told him.

"Madsen..." he said, sitting back. He had a cup of coffee in a wide-bottomed mug at his elbow, and he took a sip from it, and I could see the screws turning in his head. I said a silent prayer that he wouldn't put two and two together and out me immediately. "I seem to recall a colleague with that last name," he said slowly.

"It's a pretty common name," I told him quickly. Hopefully, not too quickly. He took another sip of coffee, then shrugged.

"Eh, maybe it'll come to me later. Anyway, glad to have you two. We're short-handed as it is. You all ready for a trip to the Middle East? Things might get a little dangerous on this route, you know."

"We're looking forward to it!" Ashley said enthusiastically.

Captain Lawrence raised his eyebrows at her. Not everybody was so giddy at the idea that they could be facing pirates or Houthi militants, among the other dangers of the sea, but Ash had always been known for her exuberance.

"I'm glad to hear that, Midshipman Hinton," he responded. "Let's get your paperwork done, and then I'll have one of the stewards show you to your cabins. Safety familiarization at 1900. That'll give you a chance to get your gear stowed and get a general idea of the layout of the ship. We'll be loading for another day or so."

He went over everything we needed to know, and when he finished, he sighed, then crossed a leg over his knee and looked up at us. He took another sip of coffee, and sighed again, like he was about to begin a conversation he'd rather have avoided.

"Let me be frank. We've got some old-fashioned sailormen on this ship. They don't particularly care for women, and we've had some trouble in the past. I'm not telling you this because I want you to be afraid or because I expect there will be trouble this time. I just want you to understand what you're walking into."

This was what I'd been expecting, and what I'd gleaned from the two Mids I'd talked to who had shipped out on the Cleveland last year. They were both male, and they noted that it was odd how few women were part of the crew. The modern merchant marine, while still heavily male-dominated, had plenty of women in it. Apparently, the Cleveland only had one. She was the boatswain (or bosun, as it was pronounced), of all people, the senior unlicensed mariner on the ship. Ashley and I were going to triple the female complement in one afternoon.

"We understand. We're used to it, sir," I told him.

He looked at me carefully, and I thought I caught a gleam of amusement in his eyes. "I hope so, Midshipman Madsen. I run a taut ship, and I am not going to be pleased if I have to play Human Resources Office. I expect my mariners to be professional and I expect them to solve their own problems. We're going to be going into some hairy areas, and we don't need any distractions." His voice softened and I saw some compassion come into his face. "Don't get me wrong, now. I don't want any 'Midshipman X' style stories on my ship, either. Anybody comes at you like that, you can ignore what I just said about solving your own problems and come directly to me. And if you don't feel comfortable talking to me, you can always talk to the Chief. Understand?"

Ashley and I both knew what he was referring to. A few years ago, a Midshipman had made international news alleging that she and almost every female mariner she knew had been raped at some point on their ship. Avoiding this was drilled into us at King's Point, and if it hadn't been, Mom's job made me very aware of the issue. She'd been fighting misogyny her entire career.

I wasn't that concerned, frankly. I could take care of myself, and I could take care of Ashley, too. I was an athlete, knew my way around a martial arts dojo, and was not a shrinking violet. My parents aside -- I refused to use either of them as a crutch -- I did not anticipate many problems with the rest of the crew.

As for the reference to the Chief, Ash and I both assumed he meant either the Chief Engineer or the Chief Mate. There were a lot of chiefs on a ship, and the term was so common neither of us thought anything of it.

Half an hour later we had been escorted to our cabins by a squat, surly steward in blue coveralls. He didn't say a word to us, just gestured. We were at the end of a long corridor, the last two cabins on the left. Ashley's was next to mine, which was convenient.

Once in my cabin, I unpacked my gear -- laptop; all my documents and paperwork; khaki pants [5 pairs]; khaki shirts [5]; formal uniform [1], the 'blues' we called it; underwear, [5] (not sexy); underwear, [1] (sexy); socks [14]; a small stuffed animal of a shark which I had with me since I was a baby, a gift from one of Mom's friends in the Navy; civilian clothes [3 sets]; laundry bag; long johns; makeup and other hygiene stuff; shower shoes; my Xbox and controller (Ashley brought the movies, I brought the games); knife; flashlight; water bottle; my coffee thermos; my smartphone; study materials; my pocket rocket vibrator, which I expected to get me through some lonely nights; and the rest of the random stuff I would need for the next nine months. I traveled light, compared to some of my peers, but thanks to Mom and Dad I knew what was necessary and what was nice to have. I focused on the necessary.

Ashley and I would have to share a head -- bathroom, for you lubbers - not an uncommon thing, and we'd dealt with it before. I'd heard stories about ships where everybody but the Master was using the same communal heads, and I was glad that this ship had been built this century. It was convenient that Ashley and I were female, as it made this kind of sharing a lot easier and it gave the captain a convenient excuse for keeping us together.

I was just getting my gear stowed when I heard the inevitable tapping on my door. We had about half an hour until the safety muster, and I knew what was coming.

I opened my door and saw Ashley standing there, looking pensive.

"You got a minute, Mer?" Ashley asked me, a bashful look on her face.

I sighed. "Of course, Ash," I told her, emphasizing the nickname. "Come on in."

Ashley pushed past me. I closed the door, locked it, and turned to face her.

She was on me almost immediately, her lips hungrily finding mine, her tongue snaking out past her lips, licking mine and then worming its way into my mouth. I pressed my body to hers and returned her kiss, with only slightly less enthusiasm.

Now, before we continue with my sea story, let me make a few things clear. I'm single. Ashley was a friend with benefits, and she wasn't gay, like me. She was completely bisexual and had a boyfriend back at King's Point. I was too focused on my career to care about relationships besides a few close friends like her, but I had to admit that her body felt good next to mine, and I appreciated having someone who could help slake my lusts. It was a long time alone at sea and like I said before, this is a male-dominated industry.

Nearly every man I'd ever sailed with would have been happy to sleep with me. But, unfortunately for them and for me, men didn't do anything for me. Ashley, on the other hand, did. And that's why I, against my better judgment, played with her from time to time, especially at the start of a voyage. It had become our little routine.

We didn't have a lot of time, so we didn't stand on ceremony. I unbuttoned enough of her shirt to pull the rest of it off, and then she undressed me. I unsnapped her bra and it fell away, and she did the same for me.

Ashley was far more gifted in the boob department than I was -- her breasts were slightly too big for my hands to hold completely, her nipples thick and already hard from my attentions. I could feel them under my palms, and I pinched one, eliciting an 'oooh' from Ashley's mouth into mine.

Her hands found my breasts, which, though smaller, were firm and perky, just large enough to fill her hands and keep my shirts from hanging perfectly straight on my body. She could have pinched my nipples, had the stiff barbells from my piercings not made that a difficult maneuver. The nipple piercings were a reminder of our first cruise last year and our drunken night of shore leave in Trieste. They were the only thing I had to remember that night by, that and the fouled anchor tattoo above and to the right of my mons. Ashley had a matching one on the other side and a grainy video on her iPhone, and that's the only reason we had any idea how any of these body modifications had gotten there. The booze in Trieste had flown freely. A little too freely, honestly.

It had been a dumb, rookie move, getting blackout drunk in a foreign country on our first voyage, just out of our teens, but Ashley had already spilled the beans about my parents, and the bosun had taken us under his wing to keep us out of trouble. He let us do what we wanted but kept the men away from us -- both the Italians and the rest of the crew -- which, looking back, I really needed to thank him for if we ever sailed together again. It was nice to be able to let off some steam without having to worry about a roofie or a knife.

Besides, what was a more natural pairing than sailors and tattoo parlors?

I pulled away from Ashley, stared into her brown eyes briefly, and then dove back in. I took the initiative this time, pushing her towards my rack -- the bed, that is. Her long, curly brunette hair had been hidden underneath her blue ball cap, but she'd left her cap in her cabin. It would have just gotten in the way. She needed that cap to keep her hair out of the engines, but we'd have hard hats on when we did the safety briefing, so she could leave the hat in her stateroom.

I didn't have the same problem. I was a swimmer and kept my hair in a short, blonde pixie cut, far shorter than my mom's shoulder length, face-framing blonde hair that looked so professional in her official portrait -- the American and Navy flags behind her, the star above a single broad and narrow stripe of a Rear Admiral (Upper Half) on her arms, the gold wings of a Naval aviator and the gold command star of a ship's captain on her chest, a pair of demure pearls in her ears and that ugly ass tab tie around her neck. She'd been vaguely disappointed when I'd chosen King's Point over Annapolis, but I think she understood I was Daddy's girl, and I wanted to be a ship's Master, not a flyer, like her.

But what I wanted right now was to get off, and to get Ash off, as quickly and quietly as we could, because we didn't have a ton of time. I knew she needed to cum to take the edge off her nerves -- we'd talked about this a lot over the last year, how being nervous made her frisky -- but I also didn't want us to get caught. There was only one thing that I didn't want to get into the rest of our crewmates' heads besides who my parents were, and that was that Ash and I were a couple of randy sluts who were ready to party.

The problem was, I knew that we WERE a couple of randy sluts ready to party -- just not with them. If there was one thing my father had drilled into my head over the years, it was his philosophy about relationships at work. It could be summed up in a single sentence: "Don't shit where you eat."

Ash and I tumbled over onto my rack, her fingers fumbling with the button on her pants, sliding them off as she scooted onto the bed. The racks were about six feet long, and Ash fit perfectly, while I, being tall, always had to bend my legs to fit. You got used to it.

Her pants and panties came down, and as my mouth went back on hers, my fingers found the patch of dark fur above her clit which pointed straight down towards where I had been aiming. My fingers sank into her, the slickness of her pussy proving to me how hot she was and thus how nervous she must have been. I felt her groan into my mouth as my fingers began to work inside her, getting them good and wet, before I withdrew them and began to circle her clit softly like I knew she preferred.

"Oh God, Mer..." she panted, cupping my breasts and pulling on my piercings, which sent an electric shock through my chest and down to my womanhood. I may have been drunk as hell when I got them, but I have never regretted it, not once. They've made my nipples far more sensitive than they'd ever been before, and I loved having them played with.

Before I went any farther, I pulled away from Ash, unbuttoned and unzippered my own pants, and pulled them down. I wasn't wearing underwear -- I rarely did on shore, and as the heavily air-conditioned air hit my shaved junk, I felt goosebumps rise on my arms, my nipples hardened even more, and a chill went down my back. The best way to warm up was right in front of me, so I dove back down, kissed Ash hard, and began to rub her clit again, clockwise circles for a few turns, then counterclockwise, as she mewled into my mouth.

I chanced to look at my watch, saw that it was 1845 -- we had fifteen minutes to get cleaned up and get to the safety muster -- and knew that there was not going to be time for me to get off. I knew Ash needed it more than I did, so I focused my attention on her.

Her lips and mine smashed together, I reached my left arm around her neck, pulling her in close, our breasts squashing together, my fingers deftly and swiftly diddling her clit. I could feel her body shake and quiver underneath me, the signs I knew so well of her impending orgasm. She reached up and ran her hand through my hair, and I pulled my lips off hers, kissed her ear, and hugged her tight as she clung to me.

It wasn't long before she tensed up completely, her hand roughly pulling my hair as she bit off a scream, then started bucking against my hand. She squeezed her legs tightly on my fingers, and then pushed me away, her orgasm washing over her. Her fingers in my hair started to hurt, but then she suddenly relaxed them, letting my hair go, and I pulled up to look at her. She smiled dreamily at me.

"What about you?"

I shook my head. "No time. I'll take care of myself later. Now, let that be the last time for a while -- we don't need to go up on deck reeking of sex, okay?"

"Aye, aye ma'am!" She responded. I rolled my eyes and bopped the end of her nose. I stood up, offered her my hand, pulled her up and then started getting dressed, while Ash did the same.

We went to the head to wash our hands and straighten up, and we headed up on deck to muster for the safety walkthrough. We saw nobody, and nobody saw us, and I felt relieved that we'd gotten away with a little afternoon delight without ruining our reputations onboard.

So far so good, I thought to myself.

It was at that point that everything started going to shit.

We headed up to the bridge to start the safety familiarization. We were met up there by a large, potbellied man with sandy brown hair and a thick mustache that was going gray. He was a bear of a man, and unlike Captain Lawrence he was pale pink and wearing a greasy boiler suit. It was clear he was an engineer, just looking at him, and given his age -- he wasn't a day younger than sixty if I had to guess -- he was likely the Chief Engineer.

"Christ," he said, when he saw Ash and I enter the bridge. "The last thing we fucking need. More cunts on this ship."

He didn't even have the courtesy to say it under his breath. I could feel his eyes on me, and I could tell he didn't care much for what he saw. Then I saw him look at Ash, whose curly hair was hanging down because she was holding her hard hat in her hand, and I saw a smirk form in the corners of his mouth.

A knot started to form in my gut.

"Well, at least one of you is worth looking at," he said to us, as we made our way across the bridge to where he was holding court.

There was a small scrum of men on the bridge. The captain was nowhere to be seen, and I assumed he was off supervising the cargo loading. There was one other officer on the bridge, a short, swarthy-looking man, partly balding with beady eyes, a white shirt with three gold stripes on his epaulettes, indicating he was the first mate. He was standing near the burly engineer, and I saw that he smiled when the engineer had pronounced the word "cunts" in our direction.

The knot got harder. Porky Pig and Captain Combover. I had to stop myself from snorting at the mental image.

There were four other men there, all of them wearing boiler suits of dark blue, like Porky Pig.

"I'm Derrick Hogg," he said to us as we stepped over. I thought the name was appropriate. He was acting like a pig, and I almost said as much. I bit my tongue so hard I thought I could taste blood. I didn't need to look at Ash to know she was probably doing the same thing. "Which one of you is Hinton? Please be the pretty one," he said.

"I'm Midshipman Hinton," Ash said, squaring up in front of him. I was proud of her for standing tall, even though he towered over her, and not looking cowed or afraid.

"Oh, thank Jesus," he said, looking her up and down one more time. "I was afraid I'd be stuck with the dyke here," he said, looking at me with disdain.

"My name is Midshipman Madsen," I said, looking him squarely in the eye. We were almost the same height. He may have had an inch on me, but I wasn't going to let that make a difference. I knew full well how we handled ourselves now was going to be around the ship in no time -- there was no smaller, more tight-knit a community of fucking gossips than the two dozen men and women on a ship. By the end of this voyage, we'd know almost everything about each other -- at least, if this crew was anything like the other ships I'd served on -- for good or ill. I decided to just get this out of the way. "And no, this dyke -- good call by the way, guessed it in one -- is a deck officer trainee," I told him. "And I assume by the fact that you're so white you probably glow in the dark that you're the chief engineer?"

Hogg guffawed, slapping me on the shoulder. I wanted to punch him in his fucking face, but I let the overfamiliarity go. "Ha! Got a mouth on this one," he said. "I like it. I'm betting you and the Chief are going to get along just fine," he said. "Yes, I'm the ChEng. And don't you forget it."

There was another reference to "the Chief." Who was he referring to? He was the chief engineer, and the beady eyed balding guy was the chief mate, aka the first mate or first officer, the #2 man on the ship. Was he referring to this guy?

The captain had told Ash and me that if we had a problem with any of the crew getting handsy, we could talk to him or go to the Chief. Given the way these two had already acted towards us, I couldn't believe for a second that he wanted us to talk to one of these assholes if we were being sexually harassed. Hell, Chief Hogg had already said enough in the last five minutes to get him fired from any Fortune 500 company in America. So, who was this mysterious 'Chief?'

I stood there pondering this, as Hogg began the safety briefing. The other four guys were also new to the ship, having just signed on here in Norfolk. Two were able seamen, or ABs, who were in the deck department like me, and I'd probably be standing watch with them. I made a note of their names in my head. The other two were oilers, mid-level guys in the engine department -- the equivalent of an able seaman -- who were almost brand new, on their first ship fresh out of their Union apprenticeship program. They'd have spent months at sea already, but this would be their first without the training wheels on.

Hogg introduced the first officer, whose name was Daniel Mugridge, but he was permanently fixed in my brain as Captain Combover. They appeared to be fast friends. Mugridge would be my immediate supervisor, as he was responsible for the deck department, which I would be serving in. Great. Just fucking great.

"Normally, the Chief would be handling this safety briefing," Hogg said as he escorted us around. "But since there's some cargo handling issue forward, I'm stuck with the lot of you lubbers. At least we've got two new ABs here. We've been sailing short, still are, so you all are welcome, even you two cunts," he said, jerking a thumb at me and Ash.

Ash started to say something, which I was sure was going to be some kind of admonishment like "Stop calling us cunts," but I gripped her arm and shook my head. The last thing we should do is let Hogg know that this was pissing us off. If we did, he'd never stop saying it.

My experience with guys like him was simple -- the minute you showed an ounce of weakness, they'd pounce on you. Best thing to do was ignore him, let him realize he wasn't going to get a rise out of you, and eventually he'd quit.

"You'll meet the Chief at chow time, I'm sure," he said.

An hour later, we'd finished the safety briefing. Hogg had us initial a bunch of forms confirming we'd been briefed, and he signed off, and then we were free. We'd joined the ship after dinner, which had been from 1730 to 1830, but Ash and I had eaten on the plane. We could have headed to the galley to see what the stewards had left out for night lunch, the middle of the night meal for the crew on the overnight watches. We could have probably looked around and found something to eat, but I didn't want to go messing around in the galley until we'd met the steward department folks, though, so we skipped it. The stewards are, in my opinion, the most important guys on the ship, and keeping them happy was the best way to make sure you'd get the grub you wanted when they did grub runs. Nothing was more important to morale than food on a ship. A good cook could make or break a contract.

The ship was due to sail tomorrow morning at 0500, and Captain Combover hadn't posted an updated watch list with me on it yet, so as far as I was aware we had the rest of the night free. We'd all turn to in the morning, but until then, we'd have some free time.

I went back to my cabin to finish stowing my gear, which I had left half finished before Ash needed to get off and interrupted me. Around 2145 I heard a knock at my door and opened it to find Ash standing there. She had her Xbox controller in her hand and had changed into sweats.

We were lucky -- we had been given officer berths on the ship, so our cabins were a bit larger than I had been expecting, and both of us had TVs and mini-fridges in our rooms. I had already hooked up the Xbox to the TV, and Ash and I grabbed seats on the rack and fired up Gears 5. It was an older game, but it was co-op, so it was in our rotation. Neither of us said anything until we were half an hour into it.

"Hogg's a dickhead," Ash told me, while we fought through another wave of the Swarm. Her eyes never left the TV.

"Ya think?" I replied, sarcasm dripping off my words.

"I think he's going to be a problem," she told me. "And I think he and Mugridge are a little too chummy."

"Yeah, I noticed. Well, hopefully the entire crew isn't filled with misogynist neanderthals," I told her. We started in on a boss fight, and I took out my anger on him. Every time I used my chainsaw bayonet on one of the Swarm, I imagined it was Hogg's face.

I'd been dealing with assholes like Porky Pig my whole life and so had Mom. I thought we'd handled it well, taking him in stride. Ash would have to deal with him more than I would, and I hoped she was ready for it.

At no time did either of us consider going to the captain. We'd heard loud and clear what he'd said earlier. He ran a taut ship, and he didn't want to play HR coordinator. Unless Hogg tried to touch one of us, he expected us to deal with our problems ourselves. I was fine with that.

"They keep talking about this 'Chief,'" I said. "Who do you think they're talking about? Not the ChEng or the first mate, right?"

"I haven't been able to figure that out, either," she said. The next wave wiped us both, and I threw down my controller in disgust.

"Fuck this game," I growled, probably for something like the nine thousandth time. Ashley just smiled at me.

"Hey, you want me to finish you off? We ran out of time earlier," she said, looking at me.

The offer was tempting, but I shook my head no.

I liked Ashley, but I didn't want her to get attached to me or vice versa. She was a friend with benefits, but I made sure that those benefits weren't something that happened all the time. Start of a voyage, I'd give her some leeway, but twice in one day was a firm no.

I didn't have time for that kind of bullshit, and I wasn't interested in her boyfriend or any of that romance crap. Sex was addicting, I knew, and I didn't want any attachments. We'd never really talked about it, but I think she understood. I wasn't the kind of girl to just fall head over heels for anybody, no matter how cute.

"Okay. Your loss," she shrugged. She hopped off my rack, her controller in her hand. "'Night, Mer."

"'Night," I said. I did watch her ass as she padded out of my cabin and closed the door. I felt a brief pang of regret, almost called out for her to stop, but then thought better of it. I got up, went to the head and brushed my teeth, then climbed in my rack and turned out the light.

* * *

Newark, New Jersey

30 March 2025

1700 hours (5:00 PM EDT)

Third day of voyage

The ship left right on time, and I stood my watch on the bridge under the eyes of the captain, chief mate and one of the ABs. Breakfast had been uneventful, with me and Ashley being the only two women. I had thought there was at least one other woman on this ship, but I had yet to meet one.

The trip from Norfolk to Newark took a little more than a day, and we were soon docked up again. Captain Combover had posted the watch list, and I, of course, was stuck with shit duty. Whether that was because I was brand new or because I was a woman and he subscribed to the "Boss Hogg" (yes, that was what he demanded to be called in Engineering, Ashley confirmed it, but he would always be Porky Pig to me) view of female mariners, I had no idea. All I knew was that I was stuck with the 0400 to 0800 watch in the morning, and the 1600 to 2000 watch in the evening. The late watch would have been good if I'd been getting overtime, but our pay was set at a paltry $1200 a month. I shouldn't complain, though, because cadets at the other maritime academies had to pay for their sea time.

The ship was on a pretty standard four hours on/eight hours off watchstanding routine, which I appreciated, but the 0400 to 0800 watch was super early, and it sucked, breaking up my sleep schedule and leaving me with most of the morning and afternoon to do nothing. It was also during a time when there wasn't a lot to do even when I was on watch. I needed to get my watchstanding hours in to qualify as Officer-in-Charge of a Navigational Watch, and doing it then with one of the two third mates, who apparently also got the shit duty, would let the captain and first mate get a full night's rest. They, like the engineers, were day workers and didn't have to stand watches. Our second mate was meeting the ship in Jebel Ali, and we were missing a few unlicensed mariners as well. That put a lot of pressure on me and the two third mates.

The 1600 to 2000 watch was fine -- the captain and first mate were usually available if we needed them, and both of them had popped onto the bridge my first day to check on me, which I appreciated. The only downside was that I missed dinner at 1800, which meant when I came off watch at 2000 I'd be stuck with cold leftovers or night lunch if it was out. I could have asked for a relief to grab a bite, but I didn't want to lose any time on the bridge, so I just dealt with it.

I certainly wasn't going to get fat on this trip, but I wasn't really worried about that either. Ashley, as an engineer, didn't stand watches, instead she was expected to work from 0830 to 1830 every day. She wasn't senior enough to be on-call, so she just had to do her day work, any overtime they gave her, and then she was free. This was great, because it meant we had time in the evenings together, usually.

It wasn't until we were about to leave Newark, almost fully loaded, heading for Tangiers, that the I met the mysterious 'Chief' finally.

And that meeting changed my life.

"Hey, you!" Mugridge called out to me the afternoon we'd arrived at Newark, as I was an hour into my four-hour watch on the bridge. There wasn't much to do, as we were in port, so I was catching up on my Sea Project -- our homework assignment for Sea Year -- while I drank some tepid bridge coffee. The AB who was standing watch with me was sullen and quiet, didn't say a word to me the entire time, so I just put my earbuds in and listened to some music while I did my homework. I took them out as soon as I saw the first mate step onto the bridge, walkie-talkie in his hand.

I bristled when he shouted at me -- Captain Combover had yet to so much as shake my hand or call me by name, and I was getting the feeling he had no idea what my name actually was. I had introduced myself to him that first day, but he probably hadn't been paying attention. It was all of these little indignities that I was getting used to, from the watch list to Hogg's behavior, and I resolved again not to let them get to me.

"Yes, sir?" I asked, putting my earbuds in my pocket and closing my Sea Project notebook.

"Get up forward, there's another issue with the cargo and the Chief needs some backup from an officer," he told me.

"Aye, sir," I told him, grabbing my hard hat and hurrying off the bridge towards the main deck.

I could see a large container hanging in midair from one of the huge ship-to-shore cranes, not moving. The last thing we needed was a pause in cargo loading if we wanted to get on our way to Tanger Med in time. Now, why I needed to go forward -- the lowest ranking officer on the ship -- I had no idea, but I got the feeling it was because First Mate Mugridge was a lazy fuck and didn't want to walk the entire length of the ship to where I saw a knot of people gesticulating wildly.

It took a solid ten minutes to negotiate the distance from the bridge down to the main deck and forward to where that group of people were standing. By the time I got there, it was clear this was yet another argument between the ship crew and the longshoremen who were loading the ship, ostensibly under the direction of the bosun, who was apparently in charge of cargo handling.

"Listen, I don't give a shit what your paperwork says," a voice was saying. It was a female voice, and my ears perked up immediately. "I'm telling you this container needs to go in-board or it's going to cause us problems with stability. Move it center stack, and shut the fuck up about it, okay?"

"Lady, I can't do that on your authority, okay? This is a DOD container, and they won't let me move it anywhere but where it's supposed to go except on the authority of a ship's officer. I don't care how much experience you've got, you aren't an officer, got it? Get me an officer and I'll do whatever the fuck you want," the burly longshoreman foreman said.

"Can I help?" I asked, stepping forward.

"Who the fuck are you?" The longshoreman turned to me, looked me over and then started to turn away.

"That's Midshipman Madsen, and she's an officer," the female voice said. Her back was still to me. She hadn't turned around to look as I'd approached, keeping her attention focused directly on the foreman. "Will you take her word for it?"

I had not met this person yet, but she apparently knew who I was. Interesting.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," the longshoreman said, looking abashed for his earlier outburst. "I need you to sign off on altering the cargo loading plan," he said. "Your bosun here has requested it and I need confirmation."

I stepped up next to the bosun, took the paperwork out of the foreman's hand and looked it over. I had no idea what I was looking at -- this was something completely foreign to me. I hadn't done much in the way of cargo handling yet, that wasn't really my responsibility, it was Captain Combover's responsibility, along with help from the bosun. But I wasn't going to let some asshole bully one of my crew, especially another woman, the only other woman I'd seen on the ship. I looked for a blank spot on the form, wrote "Bosun recommendation confirmed, MIDN Madsen" and then signed my name beneath it.

The foreman took the clipboard, acknowledged me, turned around and walked off.

The bosun finally turned around and looked at me. It took all of my self-control not to be startled by what I saw.

She was tall, far taller than I was, and I was not short. I was close to six-foot, so she was easily six-three or larger. She had on a blue boiler suit and a yellow hard hat, and I could tell when I saw her from behind that her hair was longer, done up in a light blonde French braid that she wore tight on the back of her head. Her hair was almost covered by her hard hat.

I was fascinated by her face. It was thin and angular, which looked strong and fierce to me, the face of a woman who had been fighting uphill battles her whole life and was used to winning them. Her green eyes were striking, below a pair of bushy eyebrows that could have used some tweezing. Her skin was a deep tan, almost golden brown, and she had the same crow's feet around her eyes the captain had, as well as a pair of deep laugh lines around her mouth. She appeared to be in her mid-forties, probably twice my age. She looked nothing like I had imagined a bosun would look, and certainly not the way I expected another mariner, male or female, to look.

I was pretty cute, I knew. But I was too tomboyish and too athletic for anyone to ever call me beautiful. This woman, though, was almost beautiful, and with a face like that, she would have turned heads in most rooms I'd ever been in. She looked like an Amazon queen, and while her body was impossible to imagine, as the thick cotton of the boilersuit she was wearing would have hidden even Dolly Parton's curves, I could tell she was powerfully built. Not that I was looking, of course.

That feeling in my stomach, the butterflies? That wasn't happening. Nor was that tingling in my crotch, the one that reminded me that Ashley had teased me yesterday and I still hadn't found time to get myself off. I felt my pulse quicken, and my mouth went dry. I wanted to talk to her, find out who she was, what it was like being that tall, ask her if she'd ever wrestled naked with another woman, but I couldn't make my lips form the words.

"Thanks," she said, turning and walking past me.

I just stood there, dumbstruck. Above me, the container that had been hovering in midair began to move again. The sound of the crane was drowned out by my pulse pounding in my ears. I stood there a few more seconds, watching as the container was gently set on one of the inboard stacks, the sound of steel on steel finally jerking me out of my reverie.

I turned and hurried aft, back to the bridge. I took the elevator up and soon I was back at my station.

"Everything okay?" Mugridge asked me as I closed the bridge door behind me.

"Yes, the bosun just needed me to sign off on a cargo handling issue with one of the longshoremen," I told him.

"Oh shit," he said, laughing. "I bet the Chief tore that guy a new asshole," he said. "She doesn't play well with others."

"She's 'The Chief' I keep hearing about?" I asked, my voice taking on a hint of incredulity. "I had no idea who everybody kept talking about," I told him.

He looked at me like I was brain dead. "Uh, who did you think they were talking about? Me? Ha! I've got a cock, Marsden," he said laughing.

"Madsen," I said, under my breath. He was too busy laughing at his own bit of shitty humor to hear me. I sighed and spoke up. "Why does everyone call her 'Chief'?"

Captain Combover stopped laughing and swiped a hand through the few strands of hair left on his head. "She's ex-Navy," he explained. "She was a Master Chief Petty Officer before she got out. Switched over to the merchant marine, been sailing for the last eight years or so. She won't respond to any other name. Bitch likes to remind us all how long she served," he said. It amazed me how the word 'bitch' just rolled off his tongue to me, like I wasn't also a woman. What a fucking douchecanoe.

"Well, she's earned it, hasn't she?" I asked pointedly.

Mugridge looked at me, and then his eyes narrowed. "Mind your post, Marsden," he said brusquely, then turned and stalked off the bridge.

The AB who was standing by the ship's wheel turned and looked at me when the door slammed shut behind the first mate. He was a few inches shorter than me, but he looked friendly with his buzzed haircut and glasses. He was tall and skinny, tanned like the captain, but probably only a few years older than me. He had the name 'JOHNSON' stenciled in black on his boiler suit. Johnson shook his head at me, and I thought I heard him mumble the word "prick" under his breath. That was the only word he spoke to me during that entire watch. He certainly didn't like Captain Combover, but he wasn't brave enough to actually try to befriend me. Fair enough.

I understood that. Not everybody was willing to stand up for others, and I didn't expect any more from him or any of the other unlicensed mariners on the ship. Their jobs were tough enough without needing to get in the middle of officer drama.

I looked up at the ship's chronometer. Another two hours until my watch ended.

I found a bit more busy-work, then put on a new pot of coffee, tossing the tepid crap I'd been drinking over the side. I put my earbuds in, letting the dulcet tones of Metallica float through my head as I puttered about the bridge, trying to look busy. My mind started to process the last two days and soon it found its way to the Chief.

Those eyes, the way her voice sounded, low and throaty -- it reminded me of Jean Arthur in one of those Frank Capra movies from the 40s -- and how she'd known my name without us being introduced. I still hadn't formally met all the rest of the crew, including her. We'd have more than a week of blue water sailing from Newark to Tanger Med, our next stop, and I hoped I'd manage to get to meet them all by the time we got there. A full navy career and then almost a decade on merchant ships? She must have a hell of a story, and as the most senior unlicensed mariner on the ship, she was somebody I absolutely needed to get to know, regardless of her gender, how her voice made my spine shiver, or how her eyes looked. I could learn a lot from her, and I resolved to make it a priority to find a chance to pick her brain.

My thoughts didn't stop there. I saw her green eyes again, the way she walked as she walked away from me, how the French braid looked under her hard hat, how her eyes crinkled as she said "Thanks" to me, and I felt that familiar tingle in my loins.

"Johnson, I'll be in the head. Call me if you need me," I told him.

"Aye, ma'am," he said, not bothering to turn around.

Once I got to the head, I tore off my pants, unbuttoned my khaki uniform top, and unsnapped my bra. My pocket rocket was down in my cabin, so I'd have to do this the old-fashioned way, which didn't bother me at all. I closed my eyes, threw my head back, pulling my piercings as my fingers dipped into my pussy, which was already sopping with moisture. I stifled a groan as my fingers worked in and out a few times, and then I slid them up to my clit, which I began to rub gently, letting my mind wander.

At first, I thought about Ashley. The way her lips felt on mine, the way she tasted, the way her breasts felt mashed up against my body. But soon her face morphed into that of the Chief's, and I felt my body react in a visceral way, like every nerve ending had suddenly come alive. I imagined those green eyes looking into mine, then watching them rove over my body, taking in every curve. I imagined it was her fingers on my clit, rubbing gently at first, then more insistently. I tried to imagine what her body looked like under her clothes. I couldn't begin to guess at what her boobs looked like, but I knew I wanted her to have a hard body, muscles bulging and rippling, a flat stomach that led down to an unruly patch of blonde hair that would tickle my nose when I went down on her.

My fingers flicked faster and faster, just barely caressing my clit, and the images came faster and faster, me and the Chief kissing, me and the Chief in a sixty-nine, me and the Chief sucking on each other's boobs, me and the Chief, me and the Chief...

I doubled over, feeling my orgasm come crashing down, my pussy spasming as wave after wave of pleasure washed over me. I was breathing heavily, and I took a few moments to collect myself. I fixed my clothes, washed my hands, and was back on the bridge. A whopping five minutes had passed.

Johnson turned to acknowledge me when I got back to my station. My watch schedule precluded me from meeting anybody at dinner, the main meal on the ship, but breakfast and lunch were both doable. I hoped I would run into the Chief at one of those meals, when I could finally introduce myself. Or maybe we'd meet in the gym, where I'd finally get to see what she looked like without the safety gear on. That was a welcome thought.

Eventually I exhausted my make-work, so I sat down, opened my Sea Project book, and began to study.

* * *

North Atlantic Ocean

31 March 2025

0815 hours (8:15 am local)

Fourth day of voyage

"So, I figured out who the Chief is," I told Ashley the next morning at breakfast. We'd just gotten underway at 0500. I'd spent my watch with the captain, who supervised us getting out of Newark, down the Ambrose Channel, past the West Bank Lighthouse in Lower New York Bay. The captain took us out of Newark like a pro, not needing a tug. Soon we were sailing east, the sun rising in front of us, as we headed across the Atlantic toward Africa. I headed down to the galley for breakfast, where I found Ash, bleary eyed but awake. Breakfast was from 0730 to 0830 each day, which I appreciated, because it meant I could get hot food as I was coming off watch.

I got a plate of runny eggs and bacon and doused the eggs in hot sauce, grabbed a steaming mug of ship's coffee which I liberally laced with sugar, and then sat across from her.

"The bosun," she told me.

"How did you...?" I asked her, a look of surprise on my face.

She finally smiled, and I knew she was happy to have figured out the mystery before I did. "Boss Hogg wouldn't shut up about her," Ashley told me. "They seem to really, really dislike each other. I have never heard any man talk about a woman the way he talked about her. He would tell anyone who would listen, even me. I don't get it."

"What was he saying?" I asked, intrigued. A few of the other crew members made their way into the galley, some sitting together, others spreading out and tucking into their food.

"Just how much of a bitch she was, how she thought she was better than everyone else, including the officers, because she was ex-Navy, how she was a 'frigid cunt' who wouldn't look twice at man, all that kind of shit," she told me. She bit into a bagel she'd slathered with cream cheese and grape jelly. "He's a dickhead."

"I hadn't noticed," I told her, a smirk on my face. I shoveled a forkful of runny eggs into my mouth and chewed. The grub wasn't bad so far, and I thought that boded well for the rest of the voyage. At least the captain was free with the grub money and the stewards knew their job. Then again, this was the start of the trip, so we still had fresh stores. Once we left Africa, it was a month of straight sailing, and I knew that by the end of that month we'd be happy to get stale bread that was only a little moldy.

Out of the side of my eye, I noticed Porky Pig waddle into the galley. He took a tray and wandered over to the buffet.

"Oh God, please don't let him look over here. I don't need the hassle. He's been nothing but a pain in the ass to me since I got down in the engine room," Ash whispered to me, shrinking in her boiler suit and trying to look small and inconsequential.

"Has he tried anything?" I asked, starting to get concerned.

"No, nothing like that, just the snide comments and basically treating me like I was a wiper," Ash told me. A wiper was the lowest of the low in the engine room, basically an apprentice, good only for mopping the deck and staying out of the way.

"That's bullshit, you've got months of sea time," I told her, my anger at her mistreatment starting to get my blood pumping. "You're as qualified as any of the oilers down there."

"Doesn't matter. I'm just a 'cadet', he says, not fit for much more than basic bullshit," she told me, taking another bite of her bagel.

Behind me, I heard a crash of plate and silverware, and then Hogg's angry voice. Every eye in the galley turned to look at him.

"What the fuck is this bullshit, Cooky? Why the fuck are these eggs runny? They didn't teach you how to make fucking eggs at Piney Point? Your fucking mother didn't teach you?"

Hogg had thrown down his plate, a smear of yellow running off it. One of the cooks, a tall, good-looking Black kid, maybe our age, with dreadlocks on the top of his head covered in a hairnet, looked like he'd been punched in the face.

"I'm sorry, Chief Hogg," he said, in a lilting accent that I couldn't place. "This is how my momma liked her eggs, and how I've always cooked them," he told him.

"Well your mother is a cunt, and you're an idiot. Cook the fucking eggs properly, Cooky! If I want my eggs runny, I'll piss in them, got it?" He shouted. He turned to look at the assembled crew, maybe a dozen of us, sitting around the galley tables.

"What are you fuckers looking at? Don't you have work to do?" He growled.

"We get breakfast, Mr. Hogg," I said, speaking up. Ashley kicked me under the table.

Fuck this guy. I wasn't afraid of him. He could try to bully that poor kid steward, and he could push Ash around, but I was a deck officer, and I didn't report to him. And I didn't think standing up for one of the most important guys on the ship -- the fucking cook -- was going to harm my standing with my fellow mariners. "I like runny eggs. Cooky, these are great."

"Of course you like runny eggs," Hogg sneered. "It's not like anybody's fertilizing yours, dyke!"

"No, they aren't, and that's how I like it, Mr. Hogg," I responded, not taking his bait. I saw the cook stifle a grin, along with a couple of guys around the table.

"Merchant marine went to shit when they let women in," Hogg said, loading up a plate with bacon and sausages. He took it, along with a mug of coffee, and walked out of the galley, probably headed back to the engine room so he wouldn't have to look at Ash and me while he ate.

"I'm going to kill that piece of shit," Ashley said, growling under her breath.

"He's doing a fine job of that himself," I said. "He put enough grease on his plate to stop an elephant's heart."

She didn't hear a word I said, as she was already on her feet, over to talk to the cook.

"You okay?" she asked him. I just looked at her, a sinking feeling in my gut. The cook was tall, dark and handsome, and I knew Ash had a roving eye -- always had. This was going to end badly, I could tell.

"Yes, ma'am, thank you for asking," the cook said. "I guess I need to learn how to make eggs the way he wants," he told her.

"I'm Ashley, by the way. I'm a trainee marine engineer," she said, holding out her hand. The cook looked at her oddly but then reached over the buffet and shook her hand. He was wearing clear plastic mess gloves, but Ash didn't seem to mind.

"I'm Julien," he said. He smiled when he said it, and his face lit up.

Oh shit, this was indeed going to be a problem. I could tell right away that Ash was smitten. She had a boyfriend back at King's Point. I resolved to talk to her that night when we got some downtime after work.

She came over and sat back down after she talked to him, a little grin on her face. I didn't want to say anything then and there, with the rest of the crew looking at us, between me standing up to Porky Pig and Ashley introducing herself to the cook, so I just finished up my eggs and coffee, grabbed my gear, and headed back to the berth deck to get some rack time.

* * *

North Atlantic Ocean

3 April 2025

2100 hours (9:00 PM local)

Seventh Day of Voyage

A few days had passed, and we were falling into routines. My morning watch was easy, and I enjoyed watching the sunrise over the ocean as we kept sailing east towards Tangiers at a leisurely eighteen knots. Tanger Med was the biggest port in Africa, just inside the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea through the Strait of Gibraltar.

I got off watch, ate breakfast with Ashley, and tried not to see her making eyes at Julien the cook. I did notice that suddenly we were getting the freshest of the stores, our eggs were exactly the way we liked them, and Ashley had lox for her bagel with cream cheese.

After breakfast I would go work out, the gym on the ship being a tiny room with an exercise bike, a treadmill and some free weights. It was a little too cold to go swimming in the tiny pool on the ship, which was barely big enough to even be called a pool, but it was better than nothing and I'm sure we'd appreciate it when the weather got hotter. I hoped to run into the Chief, but so far I hadn't. I didn't even know her real name. That could be remedied easily, just a quick look at the crew roster, or punch up her personnel file and find her name, her birthday, blood type, fucking cup size, even, but that would make me feel like a totally obsessive stalker, and I wasn't that far gone yet.

Yet.

I knew it was only a matter of time before we'd finally meet. The ship was big, but it wasn't that big. As a non-watchstander, she had a variety of jobs to do, mostly on deck and mostly supervising the rest of the unlicensed mariners. She and the captain, sometimes the first mate, would work closely together, and if they were around, I would probably be, too.

I'd spend the early afternoon in my cabin, studying, then go on my evening watch from 1600 to 2000. Afterward, I'd make my way to the galley, where Julien had begun to leave a plate of whatever had been for dinner for me in the microwave, so I was able to get a hot meal as I came off watch. Harry the third mate wasn't so lucky, stuck with cold pizza and the other random stuff the stewards left out for night lunch. I saw him give me a dirty look the first time I unwrapped a plate of fresh food with my name scrawled in black Sharpie on the tin-foil.

Tough shit, guy. Nothing stopping you from making a new friend, I thought.

"Mer, he's so fucking hot," Ash was telling me as we were halfway through a nine-inning game in MLB The Show 2025, which I had just picked up before we left Norfolk. After food and a shower, Ash and I had been meeting up for an hour of gaming before rack time.

"Who is?" I asked. I knew who she was talking about, but I wanted to make her say it.

"Julien, duh," she said. I threw a fastball right at her batter's face, knocking him to the ground. The umpire ejected my pitcher. "What the fuck, Mer?"

"Don't you have a boyfriend, Ash?" I sighed. I put in a new pitcher, not nearly as good as my starter, and Ashley hit the second pitch into the right field bleachers.

"Serves you right for hitting my dude," she said, exulting. "Yes, I have a boyfriend. So what? He's not here," she told me.

I paused the game and turned to look at her. "Ash. C'mon, girl. Tommy is a nice guy," I told her.

"Yes, Tommy is a nice guy. Tommy is also a sailor, and Tommy is on a RO/RO heading to Baltimore," she said. Her boyfriend had gotten posted on a roll-on/roll-off ship, essentially a floating parking lot, carrying cars from Europe to the Mid-Atlantic. It was a good, sought after assignment. "I gave him a hall pass, and he returned the favor," she told me.

"Seriously?"

"Seriously. I can fuck whoever I want, including you, I might add," she leered at me, arching her eyebrows. "He knows as soon as the ship leaves port anything is fair game, and so do I. We're not fucking married, Mer. I don't even know if I want to get married. But what I do know is I like the taste of Julien's cock... I mean cooking," she said, giggling. "If you're nice to me, I'll let you watch."

I perked up slightly at this. I had no desire to ever fuck a dude, but for some odd reason, I kind of enjoyed watching two people have sex, regardless of their genders. I felt a tingle in my crotch at the thought. I unpaused the game and we kept going. I let the offer hang in the air for a few minutes, before I answered.

"I may have to take you up on that," I told her. "It's not like I have a lot of sexual outlet options on this ship," I told her. "But you know how I feel about this kind of thing," I added.

"Yeah, yeah 'don't shit where you eat,' and all that. Mer, unless you want to be a fucking nun and never get laid, you're going to have to take the opportunities that present themselves," she lectured me. I managed to strike her out to get out of the inning, and soon it was my turn at bat. "What about the bosun?"

"What about her? I've not seen her since we left Newark," I said. I didn't tell her that even mentioning the Chief's title made my pulse quicken and my pussy slick. I had been thinking about her non-stop for the last three days. She'd featured prominently in my pre-sleep routine, and my crotch rocket was getting a significant amount of use.

I kicked myself for not bringing extra batteries, but I figured there were probably some in the ship's slop chest. That's what we called the ship store the stewards ran. You could get a bunch of random stuff from there, from batteries and other essentials to things like toothpaste, tampons (yes, they actually had them, which I appreciated) and even cold weather clothes if you needed a sweatshirt.

"Well, fucking Hogg is constantly calling her a 'dyke' and a 'frigid lesbian cunt' in the engine room," Ashley told me, raising her eyebrows again.

"What, you going to tell me we have something in common?" I asked her.

"Oh, Mer. I know you're not frigid," she said, leaning over and giving me a quick peck on the lips. This could have turned into something more, but I wasn't feeling it. Ashley looked at me, saw that I wasn't in the mood, wisely sat back and threw a looping curveball that I knocked into the gap in left-center for a double. "But maybe the Chief just needs a friend. I mean, she's been like the only woman on this ship for a year or more," Ashley told me.

There was nothing I wanted more than to become friends with the Chief. But I didn't want Ashley to know that. I didn't want her to think I was a hypocrite, after all. I'd lectured her about shipboard romances for two years now.

"She's twice my age," I scoffed. It was a weak response, and Ashley pounced on me.

"Girl, I know you didn't just say that," she looked at me sideways, right before she struck out my best hitter. "You have never had a problem with Mommies before, or do I have to remind you about that time at Harbor NYC?"

My cheeks burned bright red. One of the benefits of going to King's Point is New York City is just a train ride away, and me, Ashley and some of our girlfriends liked to go clubbing on the weekends. Of course, a bunch of mariners like us gravitated to anything with a nautical theme, and the rooftop at Harbor NYC was one of the best nightclubs in the city, and it overlooked the Hudson River.

The last time we were there, just a few weeks ago, I'd let myself get picked up by a forty-something stunning redhead who was in town for the weekend for her daughter's bachelorette party, was divorced, bicurious and feeling frisky. Her daughter was my age, but that didn't stop her or me from spending the entire weekend in a very expensive hotel room in varying stages of undress. I felt that tingle again, as I remembered the smell of her perfume, some expensive stuff you could only get in like two stores in the world, and the feel of her even more expensive breasts under my hands.

That had been a nice weekend. I wondered what she was doing right now. I wondered if her daughter hated me. I wondered if her daughter was hot, too. I never actually met her.

"Hello? Mer?" Ashley said, snapping her fingers in front of my face. "I just struck out your dude on three straight pitches! You still fantasizing about that redhead?"

"Yes," I said, squirming a bit.

Ashley laughed, and I hit her in the arm. We finished the game, she went back to her cabin, and I got undressed for bed. I slid under the thin blanket, my pillow under my head -- a thin, scrappy thing that made me regret not bringing my own -- and my crotch rocket in my hand. I turned it up to its highest setting, massaging my clit as it buzzed me towards a happy ending.

My mind went back to the hotel room, the feeling of the redhead MILF's lips on my stomach, on my lips, on that magical place just below the ear and just behind the jaw that made my inside flip when someone kissed me there. I imagined her large breasts in my hands, looking up into her eyes, her green eyes...

That's when it hit me. She'd had blue eyes, not green.

Mommy's face vanished, her long red hair disappearing in my mind's eye, being replaced by a tight, light blonde French braid. Her breasts softened under my hands, no longer silicone, but real flesh and blood, and the odor of that expensive perfume morphed into the heady smell of diesel fuel and warm steel. Suddenly I was imagining the Chief, what it would have been like to be in that hotel room with her instead of the redhead.

She didn't fit. That hotel room wasn't for someone like her. That hotel room was for someone soft, rich, who was used to being pampered, who hadn't worked a day in her life. The scene in my head shifted, and suddenly we were in an anonymous passageway on the ship. This is where a fantasy about the Chief belonged, not some $5k a night suite at the Mark or the Plaza.

I groaned aloud, whispering "Chief..." the buzz of my crotch rocket echoing off the bulkheads of the room. I knew Ashley could probably hear it, and so could anybody out in the corridor, but I didn't care. I was close, and the images of me and the Chief together were pushing me inexorably towards one of the biggest orgasms I'd had in ages.

Soon I was doubling over, the pleasure overwhelming my senses. I switched the vibrator off and laid it on the bed next to me, as I panted, trying to catch my breath.

I had soaked my panties through and needed to get up to change them. I threw them in my laundry bag, dug out another pair, and then hopped back into bed.

This was intolerable. I barely knew this woman. She'd literally spoken one single word to me -- "Thanks" -- and I couldn't get her out of my mind. Strong, independent, no-relationship-necessary Mer was long gone, thanks to the Chief. I needed to figure out a way to meet her, talk to her, and I needed to do it soon.

* * *

North Atlantic Ocean

4 April 2025

0700 hours (7:00 AM local)

Eighth day of voyage

Three hours into my morning watch, I was reviewing my Sea Project, when I heard the ding of an incoming message on the ship's comms equipment. I walked over, a cup of coffee in my hand, pulled up the message and began to read.

MSCI Alert

2025-005B-Red Sea and Gulf of Aden -- Potential Piracy and Retaliatory Attacks by Houthi Forces

Description: This Alert updates U. S. Maritime Alert 2025-005B

There continues to be a high degree of risk to commercial vessels transiting the Southern Red Sea between 12N and 16N. This risk is from both Houthi backed pirate vessels near shore in the Gulf of Aden, as well as Houthi drone attacks in the Southern Red Sea from their sea-going drone carrying ship the GALAXY LEADER. While the decision to transit remains at the discretion of individual vessels and companies, it is recommended that U. S. flag and U. S. owned commercial vessels remain North of 18N in the Red Sea or East of 46E in the Gulf of Aden until further notice. Additional updates will be provided when available. This alert will not automatically expire and will be updated or cancelled as needed. Any questions regarding this alert should be directed to U. S. Naval Forces NCAGS (NAVCENT Battle Watch/Emergency).

It was a Maritime Security Communication with Industry, issued by the Maritime Administration, the Department of Transportation agency that, along with the Coast Guard, was responsible for the U. S.-flag commercial fleet.

This was one step below a Maritime Advisory, which would provide guidance and recommendations. The MSCI was just a "FYI" from MARAD, but it was something I needed to docket as an official communication to the ship, and I needed to make sure the captain and first mate saw it when they checked in.

I printed it out, handed it to the third mate, who read it, shrugged, and handed it back to me. He went back to staring out at the horizon as the darkness turned to gray murk. We were waiting for the sun to rise at 0717. It was going to be a pretty sunrise, as the weather was perfect.

I thought over what I'd read. We'd be avoiding the Red Sea on this trip. Ships had been avoiding it for more than a year now.

If this had been a normal voyage, pre-2024, after we hit Tanger Med in two days, we'd spend the next week crossing the Med, getting in line to transit the Suez Canal, which usually took a day, and then we'd be through the Red Sea, through the Bab el Mandeb Strait and the Gulf of Aden until we landed at Salahah. Salahah was the third largest city in Oman, and one of the largest transshipment hubs in the region, and our next stop before we finished discharging all of our cargo at Jebel Ali in the UAE. Then we'd go back the way we came, back through the Suez, all the way back to Norfolk.

But, as that MARAD notice had made clear, the Red Sea wasn't safe. Most major shipping lines were avoiding the Suez and the Red Sea and instead sending their ships around the Cape of Good Hope in Africa, up the coast and into Salahah that way.

What should have taken ten days was taking twenty-one now, and that's why this voyage was longer than usual. The entire transit would take us seventy-two days. We called the whole thing a two-month round trip, but thanks to the Houthis, it was closer to three total. Once back in Norfolk, I'd get my next assignment, and I'd bounce to another couple ships until my nine months was up. Part of me wished I could stay here, and I knew that was my crush on the Chief talking.

Ash and I would get December off to decompress and then classes would start back up in January, for the rest of our last year at King's Point.

The captain had said this trip might get hairy, and I understood what he meant. The Houthis had been attacking American shipping for a while now, ever since the Israeli war started in 2023. Everybody had hoped that after the ceasefire, they'd stop shooting at us, but they hadn't. In fact, things had gotten even worse. Not only were they still shooting at our ships, but they had also managed to convert the Galaxy Leader, a Japanese car carrier that they had hijacked in 2023, into a floating drone carrier platform and were using it to harass ships off the coast of Yemen.

The USS Harry S. Truman carrier group was currently in the Red Sea, and had been for weeks now, trying to deter the Houthis and find and sink the Galaxy Leader. The Houthis weren't stupid, though, and they'd repainted her and disguised the ship's transponder so it just looked like any other random RO/RO transiting the area, making dealing with her difficult. Nobody wanted to blow up a RO/RO full of cars and civilians by accident, and so the Galaxy Leader was still out there somewhere, waiting to be caught, and harassing merchant shipping in the meantime.

Mom had told me all about it when I talked to her last month before I left for this assignment. She was in the Asia-Pacific theater, commanding Carrier Strike Group 1, centered on the USS Carl Vinson. At least, that's where I thought she was. It's not like she could tell me, and who knew what her current orders were. I just hoped she was safe. Both her and Dad were often incommunicado, and I hadn't heard from either of them since well before I left to meet the ship in Norfolk.

We were weeks away from any kind of danger -- there were still pirates along our current route -- so I put the whole thing out of my mind. This became even easier when my prayers were finally answered, and who else but the Chief herself walked onto the bridge, right as the sun was about to crest the horizon.

She took off her hard hat, hanging it from a hook on the wall next to the door to the bridge wing. She grabbed a paper cup and poured herself a cup of coffee from the bridge coffee maker, then turned and stepped up next to Johnson, the AB who was manning the integrated bridge console. The third mate, a different one from Harry the Squirrel - his name was Pete and he looked sleepy all the time - barely looked at her. I, on the other hand, couldn't stop staring.

"God, I love the sunrise," she said to no one in particular. Her voice sent a thrill up my spine, just like it had the first time I'd heard it. She took a sip of her coffee.

I had a half-full mug in my hand, and I moved up to stand beside her. Johnson, the Chief and I all stood together, watching as the sun rose over the horizon, bathing the entire world in an orange glow, not a cloud in the sky. My brain registered the feeling of the vibrations from the big diesel engines under my feet, but my heart felt like I was walking on clouds. Here I was, standing next to the object of my desire, as we watched the sunrise together over the Atlantic Ocean. My heart swelled, and it took all of my self-control not to grab her hand, entwine my fingers with hers and rest my head on her shoulder.

Instead, I did the next best thing. After a few moments, as the sun was starting to get so bright as to hurt our eyes, I turned to the Chief and held out my hand.

"I don't think we've been properly introduced yet," I said to her in my bravest command voice. "I'm Midshipman Meredith Madsen."

She turned and looked at me, a slight smile on her face. "I know who you are, Midshipman Madsen. I'm Clarissa Larsen," she responded. She shifted her coffee cup into her left hand, and with her right shook mine. "Everybody calls me Chief," she added.

I don't know what I had expected, but the first time my hand touched hers, it was a surreal experience. She was a bosun, through and through, and if the stories about her time in the Navy were true, she'd spent most of her life at sea. Her hands made it clear that these were working years, not pleasure cruises. While mine were soft, the callouses just forming where I was getting used to hauling lines, tying knots and the like, hers were hard and horny. Her hand was rough, like weathered leather or a cat's tongue. Her handshake was firm, almost too firm, and I knew that my belief that she was well muscled under the boiler suit had to be accurate.

"Why do they call you Chief?" I asked her, fishing. I knew the answer to this already, but I wanted to hear her talk more, and this was the easiest way to keep the conversation going.

"I was one of the youngest Master Chief Petty Officers in the Navy," she told me. "Corpsman. Flew on choppers, sailed on carriers, got my twenty years, and then decided I wanted out. But you get used to being called Chief, and it helps me to remind some of the knuckleheads who sail with me here that I've been doing this just as long as they have," she said. I let her words wash over me, the sound of her dusky voice continuing to thrill me.

"Why did you go back to sea?" I asked her.

She smiled at me and gestured towards the sunrise. "This. You get used to it. I don't know what I would do if I didn't get to see the sunrise like this anymore," she said. "And the pay beats the fuck out of the Navy, let me tell you. Someday I'll have enough saved up to buy myself a place on Martha's Vineyard, facing east, and I can stand on my deck and watch the sunrise. Until then, well, it's a sailor's life for me," she said, in a sing-song voice. I recognized the tune, and realized she'd changed the 'pirate's life for me' from the old Disney song to 'sailor's life.'

I smiled back at her, and we turned towards the sunrise again. I sipped my coffee, and I saw her do the same. A few minutes went by, and then she spoke again.

"What about you? You're just starting. What makes you want to be out here?"

"Only thing I've ever wanted, since I was a little girl," I told her, truthfully. "I was born on a ship, actually."

"Really? That sounds like a story," she said, turning to smirk at me. For some reason I got the feeling she already knew all this, knew my story, knew me and knew who I was, and I got a fluttery feeling in my stomach, worried that she saw right through me, saw that I was crushing on her badly, and I knew if I kept talking, I was going to fuck everything up. But she'd asked me the question, and so I had to respond, or else I'd look like a dick.

At the same time, I could see AB Johnson looking at us sideways, and even Sleepy Pete had perked up in the captain's chair, listening to our conversation. I knew whatever I said would be flying around the crew by chow time, so I just decided to be honest.

"My parents took a cruise on the Queen Mary 2, from Southampton to New York City. It was a kind of last gasp of married life without a kid thing, Mom told me. She was technically too far along to have been allowed on the ship, but Mom can be pushy, and she bullied the Cunard people into letting her take the cruise even though she was close to 36 weeks at that point," I said. I took a sip of coffee. "Her water broke a day out from New York, and I was born in the sickbay of the Queen Mary 2 as the ship passed the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. I was the first child born on the ship," I told her. "I understand another kid was born like a decade ago, and then they tightened up the rules on pregnant women sailing."

Clarissa's eyes crinkled as her smile lit up the bridge, making the light of the sun pale in comparison. "So you were born to be a sailor, eh?" she asked me.

"That's what Mom said," I told her. I finished my coffee. "Someday I'm going to be the captain of my own ship, just like Daddy--"

Fuck. I cut myself off. I knew that if I kept talking I was going to get myself in trouble and damned if I wasn't right. I looked over and saw the third mate's eyes grow wide, and I knew my secret was going to be all over the fucking ship in no time. What's worse, I called him 'Daddy' like I was twelve. I was mortified.

Fuck fuck fuck.

Best thing to do was try to change the subject as quickly as I could. "Uh, Chief, could you do me a favor?" My mind was racing. I had no idea what the fuck I was going to ask her for, I just needed to say something, anything, to get 'my Daddy is a ship captain' out of the heads of the two men on the bridge with us.

"Sure, Midshipman. What can I do for you?" She said, finishing her coffee.

I blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "I was in the gym yesterday and I realized I didn't have a spotter who could help me with my weightlifting. Would you mind working out with me today?"

I did not just say that, did I? Fuck me.

I might as well have asked her to hop up on a stripper pole in the galley. I saw Johnson smirk, and Sleepy Pete's eyes, which had widened when he heard about my father, glazed over. I could tell he was imagining two sweaty women in the gym, half naked, watching each other lift. I got the feeling the ship's gym was going to be crowded from now on, and I wanted to crawl through one of the port holes and fall into the ocean.

"I'd be happy to," she told me. "Why don't we talk about it over lunch," she said, nodding her head slightly at the two men on the bridge and shaking her head almost imperceptibly. I knew exactly what she was doing -- if we talked about a time, there'd be a fucking crowd waiting to watch.

"Sounds good. Thanks a lot, Chief," I told her. I was almost shaking with relief. The guys wouldn't be thinking about my dad the ship's captain now, they'd be talking together about trying to get a glimpse of two of the three women on the ship in the gym. I may have dodged a bullet.

Frankly, I cared far less about the rest of the crew staring at me for being a woman than I did them trying to figure out who my father was.

The Chief nodded at me again, then turned and left the bridge. She left me feeling warm and fuzzy, which I realized as soon as she left was as much due to the sun rising in the sky as her physical presence. It hit me maybe half an hour after sunrise, right as I was about to get off watch and go get breakfast, that she'd asked me out for lunch.

* * *

North Atlantic Ocean

4 April 2025

1230 hours (12:30 PM local)

Eighth day of voyage

It was an all-American lunch. Burgers, fries, apple pie. I had to give Julien and the stewards credit, they knew how to please a crew of hungry mariners. Runny eggs aside, they gave us all the usual comfort foods, and I appreciated it. We were only a week into the cruise so far and I was starting to get a little homesick.

This always happened to me at this point in a cruise, about a week in. This was the point where my little stuffed shark came out of my luggage and found a prominent place on my rack. I'd had the little guy, who I had nicknamed "Sharky" -- real original, I know -- for as long as I could remember. He'd been with me growing up, as we moved from place to place, following Mom's career. Dad could live anywhere, because he was at sea half the year, so we would follow Mom's assignments. I'd lived in Japan, Florida, California -- just about anywhere there was water and somewhere to dock an aircraft carrier, and Sharky had been with me every step of the way. He went with me on first voyage last year, and he was here now.

I don't know why I was thinking about Sharky as I ate by myself. I guess I should have specified to the Chief when I was planning on eating, because I got here right in the middle of chow time, hoping that if she got there early I'd meet her, and if she got there late, I could chill and wait for her. I was wearing sweats with my gym clothes underneath, just in case she wanted to go after we ate.

I had just swiped up some ketchup with a couple of fries when a rank odor hit my nostrils. It smelled like shit. Literally. There were a handful of us in the mess deck, as folks had been coming in and out, grabbing a burger and then leaving, and every head turned to see where the smell was coming from.

It was Ashley. She was in her boiler suit, and it was covered in dirt and grime, oil and grease, and I was guessing a few of those stains may have been of the fecal variety.

"Don't say a fucking word," she said, passing me on her way to the lunch line. Julien was there, looking appalled at the state of her gear. She spoke to him briefly, and I saw him run over and grab some tin-foil. He wrapped up a half dozen burgers and a couple of little baskets of fries, found an old cardboard box and put all the food in it and handed it back to her.

"What the hell happened to you?" I asked, as she came over to say hello. She was still on duty, as far as I knew.

"Bilges. Fuck Boss Hogg and fuck this job. Why the hell did I decide I want to go engines?" she asked, shaking her head. She had a streak of grime running along her forehead and down her cheek, and it reminded me of an 80s centerfold where the model was dressed up like she was Rosie the Riveter, beautiful face and body, liberally doused with grease to look like she was working. I have to admit it was sexy, even if it was completely ruined by the stank coming off her.

"You like tinkering with things and fucking around with engines, the last time I checked," I reminded her. Her parents had been mechanics and she'd grown up around cars and trucks her whole life. I used to tease her that she was basically Marisa Tomei in My Cousin Vinny, without the horrible New York accent.

"I like tinkering with engines, not cleaning up literal shit. Somebody has been pissing and shitting in one of the bilge tanks, rather than go up to the fucking head. I know it's Hogg and I know he does it because he makes me clean it," she said. "I'm training to be a third engineer, not a turd engineer."

"Sorry, babe," I told her. "You Doordashing on the side now, too?"

"Oh, yeah, I'm the gofer as well. Hogg didn't want to come up here to get lunch, so he sent me."

"Wait, all of that is just for him?" I asked, my mouth hanging open.

"Hogg is a fat fuck, one of the most unhappy assholes you will ever meet, and he has a cruel streak a mile wide. At the same time, he's a hell of an engineer, knows his shit and you'll learn a lot from him just by watching," the Chief said, sliding into the chair across from me. I had been so focused on Ash and her stank that I hadn't even seen the Chief come in.

"Chief, this is Ashley Hinton, my fellow midshipman," I said, by way of introduction.

"Nice to meet you, cadet," Clarissa said, nodding at her. "You'll forgive me if I don't want to shake your hand, I hope," she added, with a smile.

"None at all, Chief," Ash said, sighing. "I don't even want to touch myself. Anyway, nice meeting you. I better get out of here before I ruin everybody's lunch. See you tonight, Mer," she said.

She turned and winked at Julien, who was still standing gobsmacked at how she looked and smelled, before tearing out of the galley.

"Sorry I'm late, Meredith," the Chief said, taking a bite from her burger. "I got stuck supervising one of the chipping and painting crews, and lost track of time."

"Oh, you don't need to apologize to me. This is my down time before my watch at 1600. I was just studying in my cabin before I came here. I realize I neglected to ask what time you wanted to meet," I told her sheepishly.

"Don't worry about it," she told me, before taking another bite. It didn't matter what she said, just hearing that voice sent shivers down my spine. She could read the dictionary and I would want to sit there and listen to it. I was just thrilled she hadn't stood me up. Granted, while we were on a ship more than a thousand feet long, there were only twenty of us in the crew, so it's not like we couldn't find each other. But still, I was happy she'd made it.

"Does that actually happen?" I asked her. "The pissing in the bilges thing," I added by way of clarification.

The Chief snorted and took a sip of Diet Coke. "Girl, you don't want to know. Some of the shit I've seen on these ships... literally..." she trailed off. She shook her head. "Men are disgusting."

"I can drink to that, Hogg especially. He's been a complete asshat to us since we got here," I shared with her privately. I looked around, there were no engine room folks in the galley, so I felt like we could gossip a little.

"Like I said, he's a very unhappy man. Was going through a nasty divorce right as I got to the ship last year, and thus I became the sole legal representative of the entire female gender, and he had a serious axe to grind. He made a pass at me drunk one night on leave and I made it clear I wasn't interested in him or any of the other men on this ship, and that started it. After that, we butted heads a few more times, but now I leave him alone and he leaves me alone, and we're both better off for it," she explained.

I almost felt sorry for Porky Pig. Almost. If he was too pigheaded to understand that not all women are the same, then no wonder he was so unhappy. At the same time, I perked up about her not being interested in any of the other men on the ship. Could that mean...?

"Anyway, if you still need me to spot for you, how about we go down to the gym now? You don't have a problem lifting on a full stomach, do you?" she asked me, and I thought I saw a twinkle in her eye. I realized she was wearing sweats, same as me, and probably had her workout gear underneath.

"Let's do it," I told her. We stood up, brought our trays over to the stewards and then headed to the gym.

The gym was empty, not many folks getting in post-lunch workouts. I had been working out after breakfast usually, as one of the things my dad had drilled into my head was to make sure I took time for my health while I was working. The schedule on a ship can be grueling, the food is usually pretty good, plentiful and -- best of all -- free, so packing on a few pounds was quite common, and I was hell bent on avoiding it all costs.

Once we got in, I peeled off my sweats and threw them on a bench that ran along the forward bulkhead. The Chief did the same, and I felt my pulse quicken as I finally got a look at her without bulky clothes on.

She was everything I had dreamed of, and more, if you can believe it, and she wore a dark blue sports bra that showed off her midriff, along with a pair of short, body hugging, blue compression shorts. When I had pictured her in my mind as an Amazon queen, I wasn't far off. She had ripped muscles, strong shoulders, and I could see the veins running along her powerful forearms. Her thighs looked like they were made out of cabled steel, and she had six pack abs that peeked out of the gap between her shorts and the bra. I noticed a little belly button ring, with what looked like an anchor dangling from it. There wasn't an ounce of fat on her, except where I wanted it to be. Her face and hands were that dark golden brown that came from a lot of long hours in the sun, but the rest of her was as pale pink as I was.

Her ass was round, but small. She didn't sport an hourglass figure by any stretch of the imagination. Her body was pure athlete, and it was clear she spent a lot of her off time in the gym. It didn't hurt that, as bosun, she had one of the most hands-on jobs on the ship. Those arms didn't look like they'd gotten that way just from pumping iron alone.

Her breasts, though, were more than I could have hoped for. The Chief was tall and broad, and in my experience, most athletic built women like her had tiny breasts and often ended up getting boob jobs so that their upper half looked like the rest of them. Now, I couldn't be sure, just looking at them in her sports bra, but her breasts looked natural. They were big enough that they fit her frame, but not so big that they'd draw unwanted attention. I would hesitate to call her stacked -- she was close to it -- but from the moment I saw her in her gym clothes, I wanted nothing more than to rest my head on those boobs and run my fingers up and down her body.

My mind was suddenly in overdrive, the fantasies coming fast and furious. I had to do my best to concentrate, work some saliva into my mouth so I could speak and try not to soak through my shorts.

I was wearing black, fortunately, so the chance of that was relatively low. I had on a sports bra as well, but I opted for baggy gym trunks instead of tight shorts. I was a few inches shorter than the Chief, and where she was brawny, I was more lithe and wiry. My waist was much smaller than hers, my ass even smaller, and as I noted before, my breasts were just big enough to sit firm and high up on my chest, but not big enough that they screamed "touch me," like hers did. I had a swimmers build, other than my boobs, which were just a bit too big to qualify. I never had any problems dating, other than finding women who were interested in something more than just a one-night stand or the satisfaction of some bicuriosity, not that I had a problem with that. Some of the best sex I'd ever had came from those types of hookups, like that redhead a few months ago.

We stretched, and soon I had racked the weights and began my weightlifting. The Chief was a great spotter, made sure I was safe the entire time, and encouraged me to push through when I was ready to stop.

She almost killed me, though.

The gym had horrible air circulation, and when I mean horrible, I mean there was none. It was just a cube on the ship, no idea what kind of a room it had been before -- most likely storage - and with the body heat of two people working out, the temperature rose steadily. We were both sweating and sweating heavily.

I was in the middle of a set of twenty reps, when I felt a splotch. It had landed on my bare chest and mingled with the sweat already there. I looked up and saw those green eyes staring down at what appeared to be my chest. I hesitated for a second, but then kept going, my arms moving as I watched a single bead of sweat start to form on the end of the Chief's nose.

I was fixated on this bead of sweat. I couldn't take my eyes off it. When was it going to fall? Where was it going to fall? I pushed through the reps, crossing into double digits, and my arms were twitching with the effort. But I didn't notice, because I was still staring at that bead of sweat as it got larger and larger.

I was near the end of my set, and I was feeling the burn. My arms were like Jell-O, but I refused to fail in front of the Chief, who could handle the weight I was pushing without breaking a sweat. I opened my mouth to grunt out the last two, when I suddenly saw that drop of sweat finally fall from her nose.

It fell in slow motion, straight from the tip of her nose, down, down, down...

... until it landed right in my mouth. Right on the end of my tongue, actually. I could taste the salt, and my brain went blank.

This water had been in the Chief's body, now it was in mine. I got a brief flash of that Dune movie with Timothy Chalamet and Zendaya, how the characters thought sharing a body's water was like sex, a sacred thing, and I almost came in my pants right there.

"Holy shit," I muttered, as I finished my reps and reset the bar.

The Chief grinned down at me.

"I'm proud you pushed through. That was a lot of weight for a woman your size," she told me.

Thank God she thought I was talking about the weight. My brain was still not functioning properly, and I don't think I could have crafted a coherent response if you'd held a gun to my head.

She put on twice as much weight as I had been benching, and then we swapped positions -- I made sure to towel myself off before I spotted her. While I had found her sweat in my mouth highly erotic, I had also come to recognize that my judgment on what was normal and not when it came to Clarissa Larsen had flown out the window a long time ago.

For the next half an hour, we worked up a sweat together. There wasn't much time for talking, because we were focused on the workout, and I was focused on her body. I was filing away every single image I could in my spank bank, and I knew as soon as we were done, I was going to make a beeline for my bunk and my vibrator.

And, as if I needed anything else to send my libido into overdrive, I watched as the Chief had an orgasm, right in front of me.

I am not making this up.

After the weight bench, the Chief told me she wanted to do some sit-ups and crunches. She started with a set of twenty crunches, her legs in the air, and I watched, mesmerized as her abs rippled with each move. When she finished the set, she put her feet down and asked me to hold them for her.

When my hands touched her bare legs, just pushing down on her shins to keep her feet planted on the deck, I thought I was going to faint. The room was way hotter than it had even been a few minutes before -- and I didn't know if that was just me, or because the actual temperature had risen.

The Chief started with her sit-ups, counting them off, one at a time. She was going hard, and I couldn't stop staring, her abs working constantly, her breasts moving up and down, coming closer and then moving away from me, her thighs tensing with each sit-up. She passed twenty, then thirty, and there was no sign of her stopping. It was intense, almost hypnotic and I found myself staring openly, my mouth slightly agape as I watched this female Hercules push herself.

And then it happened. Suddenly she stopped -- just laid back completely, squeezing her eyes shut, gritting her teeth and breathing heavily. I was worried that she pulled something, until I felt her legs trembling under my hands and a small moan escaped her lips. She slapped a hand over her mouth, and I could tell she was blushing.

"Chief! You okay? You pull something?!" I asked, starting to freak out a little. The first time I spot her and she hurts herself? She'd never do this again. And I was desperate for us to do this again.

"Shit, Meredith, I'm so sorry. This is completely embarrassing, but I just had... well, I just had a coregasm," she told me, her breathing still heavy.

"What?" I asked her. Had I heard that right?

"A coregasm. It happens to me sometimes when I work my core muscles too hard for too long, especially when it's hot as fuck," she explained, lifting her head off the mat to look at me. "First time I've had one in a while, honestly. Thank you," she said, grinning at me. "I think I've found myself a permanent workout partner," she laughed, breathily, laying her head back down and shaking it from side to side.

I almost fainted. I had barely touched her, and I'd already given her an orgasm? I mean, I hadn't given her one, but I was part of what made it happen, right?

I needed to get out of there immediately and get somewhere that I could finish myself off before I melted from pure arousal.

I hopped up, grabbed my towel, and threw it around my neck. I held my hand out and helped her to her feet. She started to wipe down the equipment.

"Thanks for the workout, Chief," I nodded to her. "Same time tomorrow?"

"It's a date," she told me, a small smile forming on her lips.

Oh my God.

"Can't wait," I said, my mouth almost refusing to make words. She didn't seem to notice, thankfully.

"That was a great workout. I'm going to stick around and get some cardio. See you later, Meredith."

Her saying my full name again broke the spell. I grinned at her and felt my brain starting to come back into focus. This was the sexiest workout I'd ever had in my life, and I would never forget it.

"Call me Mer," I told her, smiling. "See you tomorrow," I added.

"Mer... that's French for 'the sea,' right?" She said with a grin. "Suits you."

I felt my spirit soar.

"See you soon, Mer," she said. She gave me a little wave as the treadmill started up and she began to jog.

I headed back to my bunk, my feet barely touching the deck. I was out of my gear in an instant, all of it thrown in my laundry bag, and I headed straight into the head for a shower.

The water felt good on my tired muscles, and I luxuriated for a few moments, closing my eyes and remembering what it felt like when Clarissa's hands touched mine, when we bumped into each other, the taste of her sweat. The heat loosened my muscles and wicked away the salt from my skin.

I couldn't help it. As I soaped my skin, my hands brushed my piercings, and my nipples began to harden. I couldn't get the images of Clarissa's body, her muscles rippling, out of my head. And then there were the sounds -- the sounds she made as she pumped iron, the tiny moan that escaped from her lips when she orgasmed from the workout. I felt my hands being involuntarily drawn lower and lower, and soon I was tickling my mons, my fingers tracing the anchor tattoo just beside it, and then I gave up any pretense that I was trying to get clean, and let myself go.

My fingers found my clit, probing, dipping into my pussy, as I remembered what it was like being so close to the Chief. I freely admit, the images and the feelings, the emotion of it all was heady, like wine. I was so wrapped up in my fantasies about Clarissa that if Ash had barged into the bathroom, demanded to go down on me this instant, I'd have told her no, just so I could enjoy the fantasies all by myself.

I'd never felt like that before -- like I would rather be alone with my imagination than with a flesh and blood person, but the Chief did something to me that I couldn't explain. I'd been with plenty of women over the years, some my age, some older, but no one had ever had this kind of a hold on my imagination, especially when we hadn't so much as kissed.

I felt my body tense up, and I realized that I had been on the edge of an orgasm for most of the afternoon. It wasn't long coming, and soon my knees were bending, and my legs were shaking, as I felt the ecstasy that only my own fingers could give me. I gasped, bracing myself with one arm against the bulkhead until I came down off that high.

I wrapped up the shower, took a quick catnap, and then headed off to my watch at 1600.

It was uneventful. I swept the horizon with the deck binoculars, as we steadily steamed closer and closer to Tanger Med, and my mind kept wandering back to Clarissa and our workout.

"You look like the cat that got the cream," Johnson told me. "Ma'am," he added quickly, looking away like he was about to get reprimanded for talking to me. I admit I was startled -- this was the first time he'd really spoken to me despite him almost always getting the same watch duty as I did. And I hadn't realized I'd been grinning, either.

"Just thinking of some happy memories," I told him. "You ever end up daydreaming on watch?"

He let loose a big laugh. "It's the only thing I tend to do, Ms. Masden," he told me. "These watches can be long and boring, and when we're this far out, the ship basically steers herself."

"When it's just the two of us, you can call me Mer," I told him. The formality would be fine when Captain Lawrence or even Captain Combover was on the bridge, but it was just the two of us and an ordinary today, who was outside on the bridge wing keeping a lookout. The third mate was in the head and had been for ten minutes. Probably jacking off or taking a nap, I figured.

"Thanks!" Johnson said, a grin on his face. We chit-chatted for a few minutes. I learned he was from Philadelphia, he'd been going to sea since he was eighteen -- he was in his mid-twenties now -- and was hoping to make bosun someday. I liked him, and it was clear he was just happy to have someone to talk to.

"You know what? I think you're all right. I know Boss Hogg and some of the other crew don't like women, but you treat me better than most of them do. They wouldn't bother talking to me like this," he added. "I'm sorry about the shit they said to you the other day. I should have said something."

I was touched. But I also didn't need Johnson to fight my battles. "No, you were right not to say anything. You don't need to get in the middle of this stuff," I told him. "I can take care of myself."

Johnson shrugged. I hoped I hadn't offended him, but I had to make it clear that I didn't need any white knights among the crew. Hogg was a dipshit, yes, but like the captain made clear on our first day, I would have to deal with him myself. Plus, I didn't want anybody giving him any more excuses to fuck with Ash. If it was true -- that he was treating her like a wiper, making her clean shit and the like on purpose -- the last thing she needed was to make him think we were turning the crew against him.

Captain Lawrence arrived on the bridge a few minutes later, and Johnson reverted to silent mode.

"How are you finding the ship so far, Midshipman?" He asked me, as he took a seat in the captain's chair, his eyes taking in the bridge, the radar, the Automated Identification System display and all the other data readouts, as well as the ship's heading and speed.

"So far so good, sir," I told him. "I've gotten familiar with some ship operations, and I've gotten to know some of the crew. It's hard work, but I enjoy it," I told him, being as honest as I could be without being effusive.

"That's good to hear. Starting tomorrow, I'd like you to spend a few hours before you go on watch with the bosun, Chief Larsen. Have you met her yet?"

Thank God he was still looking away from me as he spoke, but I could feel my face flush a bright, hot red. "Yes, we've met," I told him.

"Good. She's a wealth of information and experience, and if you want to be a good officer, you need to understand the work the crew under you does. She's your best resource, so learn as much as you can from her. We'll be in Tangiers in three days, and then things will start to get more interesting," he told me.

"Will do, sir. I'll talk to her about it next time I see her," I confirmed for him.

"Where's Harry? Don't tell me -- in the head jerking off?" Lawrence looked at me with a half grin on his face.

The last thing I was going to do was throw anybody under the bus, especially the third mate, who I barely knew but could tell wasn't a fan of women on the ship. "Don't know, sir. I think he was checking on something forward," I said. It was a little white lie, and I saw Johnson look at me sideways, but it mollified the captain.

The rest of my watch went quickly. I grabbed a quick bite -- Julien had left me some ribs they'd made for dinner -- and then went back to my cabin. I heard Ash come in, then heard the shower come on. I popped my head in to check on her, and she told me she was exhausted and wasn't in the mood for video games that night.

We both turned in around 2100, the earliest I'd been to bed in a while.

Tomorrow, I'd get to work out with Clarissa again, and then I was ordered to spend time with her, learning from her. I couldn't believe my luck. I wrapped my arms around Sharky, hugging the stuffed animal tight, as I fell asleep, wishing he was Clarissa.

* * *

Tanger Med, Tangiers, Morocco

8 April 2025

0800 hours (8:00 AM local)

Twelfth day of voyage

The next four days flew by. It was hours and hours of sweet sailing, the sun rising bright in the sky. I watched the sunrise every day with Clarissa on the bridge. We made it a point to watch it together, standing in companionable silence, coffee in hand. Any residual embarrassment from our first workout session didn't last past the next sunrise.

Each day we'd have lunch together, and after lunch she'd take me forward on her rounds, showing me the rest of the ship, helping me get to know the unlicensed crewmembers, the apprentices, ordinary seamen, and ABs who made up the rest of the deck department. She showed me the bosun's locker just below the house, essentially just a converted container, where there was a heater and a variety of gear stowed -- it was as much a place to get out of the weather on the deck as it was a storage area. She took me all the way forward, and showed me the forepeak, near the bow of the ship, which held gear and was near the anchor chains. This was another little getaway spot, a ten minute or more brisk walk from the house, and it boasted some of the best views on the ship.

She showed me the ropes, literally. I was already pretty proficient in line handling and knot tying, gifts from Dad and my innate desire to be a good mariner, but she was amazing, and the things she could do with a length of rope were artistic.

We got to know each other better, and between the sunrises, the workouts, lunches and our mandated time together, I was positively smitten.

And so was Ashley. Not with the Chief, though, but with Julien. The night after she blew me off for video games, after she'd spent the day cleaning shit in the bilges, she blew me off again, but this time I knew why -- so she could blow Julien. She winked at me when she told me she was going to be busy that night, and it wasn't long before I heard the door to her cabin open and close, and not fifteen minutes later I heard the telltale signs of two people engaged in furious lovemaking.

I'd be lying if I said it didn't turn me on, but I was already feeling oversexed, so instead of listening or taking Ash up on her offer to watch, I put my ear buds in, cranked the metal on my smartphone and tried to drown them out.

We pulled into Tanger Med, just outside of Tangiers, Morocco, late on the evening of 7 April, and began offloading some of our cargo. We'd also be taking on additional cargo here, but the whole process would only last less than a day, so there was no time for shore leave and the stewards were only able to get a handful of stores from the shipchandlers, but we did get some fresh fruits and vegetables, among other things.

"You won't believe the amount of booze Boss Hogg managed to smuggle onboard here," Ash told me that morning at breakfast. "There must be a dozen cases of beer and a few bottles of liquor down in the engine room, right now!"

Alcohol was not forbidden on commercial ships, at least not by law. There were strict rules about its consumption -- nobody drunker than.04 or within 4 hours of duty. Those were the minimum requirements, but each company was different. The company that owned the Cleveland had their own rules, and they prohibited alcohol, but I knew from experience -- Dad had explained all of this to me before I got to the ship -- that this was honored largely in the breach. The captain would look the other way as long as nothing got out of hand.

I hadn't noticed any obvious alcohol problems on the ship, which I chalked up to Captain Lawrence being a pretty good captain who led by example. But if Hogg was a boozer -- and given how unhappy he was most of the time, it wouldn't surprise me -- that was a worrying sign and I resolved to talk to Clarissa about it, off the record.

"Stay away from that shit, Ashley," I told her. "The last thing you need is to party with any of those assholes. Don't give them the pleasure," I scolded.

"Yes, Mom," she said, sticking her tongue out at me. "I didn't realize you'd suddenly become a teetotaler, Mer," she goaded.

"I haven't," I said heatedly. "I like a drink as much as the next girl. But drinking with those assholes? I'd rather drink drano," I said.

"This is why I like you," Clarissa said, sitting down. She'd been joining Ash and I over the last few days for breakfast, and I had to admit that I enjoyed getting to spend time together, just the three of us. I didn't think Ashley was interested in the Chief, which was good, because she was all mine. She had her boytoy, after all. "Hogg and some of the engineers like to party when we get far away from home. When we get farther south and it gets warmer, they'll throw pool parties. Just be careful, don't let them get you drunk. That's how bad shit happens."

Ashley couldn't argue with the Chief -- she knew these men far better than we did, and she had the force of two decades plus at sea behind her. She was my mom's age, just turned 47 she'd told us, but she'd lived a lot of life in those 47 years, and I trusted her judgment when it came to things like this.

"Besides, if you want a drink and you want to do it safely, you both are always welcome to join me in the bosun's locker after hours. I've got a bottle of Tito's stashed there and sometimes it's nice to relax after a long day with a drink or two," she told me, winking at Ashley.

I think I choked on a bite of toast when she made the offer.

There was nothing I wanted more than to spend more off-time with the Chief. I figured Ashley would probably skip it -- she had Julien to keep her warm at night -- but I resolved to take Clarissa up on the offer as soon as we got out of port and back at sea.

Which was all too soon. It was around noon the next day that we pulled out of Tanger Med, now fully loaded for the first time on the trip and headed south towards the Cape of Good Hope.

* * *

South Atlantic Ocean

13 April 2025

1200 hours (Noon local)

Seventeenth day of voyage

The next five days passed as quickly as the previous four. Each day, Ashley, the Chief and I would get breakfast, and each afternoon the Chief and I would get lunch. I made a ton of progress on my Sea Year project. The Chief and I would meet for our workouts, trying to vary the times because the crew did, indeed, figure out we were working out together and the gym was suddenly fuller than it had ever been. We gave it a shot the first time one of the men was in there, but it cramped our style something fierce, so we resolved to skip workouts in the future if we weren't alone. Fortunately, varying our time by a few hours before and after lunch let us get them in.

No more orgasms, sadly.

I spent more time with the Chief than anybody else on the ship. Each day we'd spend a few hours together before my watch, besides mealtimes. We got to know each other pretty well. She'd tell me sea stories of her time at sea, but was cagey about her Navy experience -- I steered away from questions about what ships she served on or if she knew my mom. I was still jealously guarding the secret of my parentage, even from her, and fortunately none of the guys on the bridge had followed up on the Daddy comment, at least to my knowledge. She told me about her secret obsession with Star Wars, how she used to pretend she was Princess Leia as a kid until somebody mocked her, saying she made a better Chewbacca, because of her height. I was blown away when she gave me her Chewie impression, her deep, sultry voice making it almost spot on. If she'd told me she was a gamer, I'd have asked her to marry me on the spot.

We crossed the equator on the sixteenth day of the trip, about a third of our way around the Cape.

"I need to talk to you," the Chief said as Ashley and I sat down at our usual tables. "But not here," she added, looking around. "Come with me for a second. You can leave your tray," she said.

I looked at Ashley and she looked at me. We both started to get up. "Not you, Pollywog," the Chief said to Ashley, who looked up at her with wide eyes. I knew immediately what this was about, and I grinned. I got up and followed the Chief out of the galley and down the hall a few steps.

"Line-crossing ceremony?" I asked her, with raised eyebrows.

She grinned back at me. "Of course. I checked your file, and confirmed you crossed the equator last year -- did they do a ceremony on your ship?"

I grimaced. "They did. And it was fucking awful. The shit they made us drink was nasty, and it didn't even have booze in it," I told her, remembering. It had been a fun time, a nice little diversion during the cruise, but Mom and Dad had both told me about their crossings and what we did paled in comparison.

"Weren't you and Ashley on the same ships last year? How did she not cross when you did?"

"She got appendicitis on our last ship, the one that did a Cape run, and she flew home early. She never crossed the line on that voyage because of it," I told her. Ashley hated being reminded she had her third voyage curtailed by a vestigial organ. It had cost her two weeks of sea time, but it wouldn't matter once we finished Sea Year.

"Ah, okay. That makes sense. It didn't explain in her file why she'd not done that last leg like you did," the Chief said. "Now, this ceremony can get a little rough, but I'll be there to make sure nothing too crazy happens, okay? Tell Ash she doesn't need to worry. I'll keep Hogg in line."

"Oh shit. Hogg is Neptune?"

"He's the oldest guy on the ship, with the most crossings," she told me. "Fortunately, I'm second, so I'll be Amphitrite, and I can stop him from doing anything too stupid. He knows we can't afford to be too rough with anybody, especially with you two aboard. We aren't supposed to be doing these ceremonies anymore but fuck the lawyers. This is tradition," she said.

I nodded my head, in vigorous agreement. Tradition was important, especially in a profession as old as ours.

She clapped me on the shoulder, and we went back inside and sat down.

"What was that all about?" Ash whispered to me. The Chief looked at me directly.

"You'll find out tonight, Pollywog," I told her, grinning.

"Why do you guys keep calling me that?" Ash asked. The Chief and I just shook our heads.

Kids.

She got her subpoena from King Neptune a few minutes later, and I saw the light of understanding in her eyes. The line-crossing ceremony was pretty well known.

That evening, around 2100, the half dozen Pollywogs -- what we called crewmembers who hadn't crossed the equator before -- were gathered before the ship's pool. The weather was warm. The Chief had spent most of the forenoon -- along with my help -- decorating the pool area to make it look like a Polynesian luau, with fake flower garlands, lines and other nautical equipment hanging around it, and somewhere she'd found a handful of tiki torches which she'd lit and scattered around to add to the light.

The ceremony itself was fairly straight forward. Those of us who had crossed but weren't named characters stood around in our civilian clothes. The only person not present was the captain, who I assumed skipped the ceremony so he'd have plausible deniability if anything went wrong. King Neptune and his court would arrive in style, they'd make the Pollywogs do some demeaning, funny things, and then the Wogs would officially be branded 'shellbacks' and given a certificate to confirm they'd crossed the equator. It was a seafaring ceremony that dated back centuries.

The Pollywogs stood around, in their bathing suits, looking nervous. The group included Ashley, the two unlicensed apprentices I'd met on the first day at the safety walkthrough, one wiper in the engine room I didn't recognize and, oddly enough, AB Johnson, who had spent so much time with me on the bridge.

"Johnson, you slimy Wog," I cried when I saw him. "How have you never crossed the equator?"

"I spent most of my time on European runs, Ms. Madsen," he told me, looking sheepish. "Never had a chance to go this far south."

I grimaced at him. "Well, we'll cleanse you of your impurities here shortly."

He looked back at me with scared eyes, and I just gave him a half grin. If Johnson looked a little scared, Ashley looked terrified. She was looking around madly, like she wanted to jump off the side of the ship.

"Hey, Ash, chill," I said, walking over to her and taking her hand. "It's not that big a deal," I said, trying to calm her down.

"Hogg is the oldest guy on the ship, Mer," she said, her voice tight and clipped. "He's King Neptune, isn't he? He's going to make me do disgusting, nasty shit, I know it," she said. "How can you just stand here and let him fuck with me?"

"Hey, whoa," I said, putting my hands up. "First of all, everybody goes through this. You'd have gone through it last year with me but you got sick, remember? And second of all, the Chief is going to be right there and isn't going to let him fuck with you any more than he fucks with the rest of your unwashed fellow amphibians here," I told her.

"If he does, I'm going to kill you, Mer," she said to me, through clenched teeth. Julien saw us talking and stepped over. "Fuck my fucking appendix. I should have done this last year on a ship not filled with fuckheads."

"Ashley, it is okay," Julien said, flashing his bright white smile, and shaking his head, causing his thick dreadlocks to dance in the firelight from the tiki torches. "We have all been through this, and it's not that bad," he said. The slight French lilt in his speech betrayed his creole background. Ash had told me he was from Louisiana, born on the Bayou, and I could tell just from his accent it was true. "And I have some of Momma's best gumbo ready for afterwards. It will take your breath away, I guarantee."

"It better, or else you two are fucked, and not in a good way," she said, stamping her feet and wringing her hands, like she was getting ready for a fight.

Trumpets blared from a hidden loudspeaker, and a hush fell over the pool area. Us shellbacks moved away and to the side of the pool, as we waited for the appearance of King Neptune and his Court.

We saw them soon enough, ascending regally from the companionway that led up from the main deck. Each was carrying a lit tiki torch. Up front was Captain Combover, who was dressed in oily rags and looked like he'd liberally dabbed his face with engine grease. He was playing Davy Jones.

Behind him came the Chief. She was dressed in a bikini top and skirt made of the coarse white yarn from the swabs her mariners would use to clean the deck -- that would be a mop, for you landsmen -- that covered her chest and hips area, leaving her stomach and legs bare. Her blonde hair, which she usually wore in a French braid, was hanging wet and limp, almost down to her belly button.

I almost came in my pants, looking at her. Here was my crush, processing forward as the sea-goddess Amphitrite, soaking wet and half naked. I wanted to jump her right then, or crawl to her on my knees, worshipping her as she deserved. By the time she was close to me, I was almost shaking with arousal.

That lasted until I saw King Neptune. Behind Clarissa was Porky Pig himself. Hogg was shirtless, which was a sight I never, ever, ever needed to see. His pot belly had been smeared with a mixture of lard and axle grease, he had a beard made from the same coarse yarn as the Chief's costume, and a cheap looking plastic crown around his head.

"Make way for Neptune, Regent of the Sea!" Captain Combover cried, as we parted to allow the Court to proceed. We all clapped and cheered, as the Pollywogs tried not to look nervous while also not laughing too hard. It was an absurd scene, but that was part of the fun.

The ceremony itself was relatively tame. Each of the Pollywogs, even Ashley -- much to her consternation -- was made to kiss Hogg's grease covered belly, and soon their faces were covered in muck.

After that, they were showered with shaving cream, and ritually 'shaved' with a piece of rope. Finally, they had to run laps around the pool, and at the end, they were all shoved in for their "baptism," which also helped to clean off the shaving cream. Once that was over, they all climbed out of the pool, we cheered and clapped for them, and the stewards, who had been hovering in the back, brought out a couple of cases of beer, and a spread of food, including steaks and shrimp, big tureens filled with gumbo -- Julien's momma was a culinary genius -- and ice cream.

The beer was strictly rationed -- one a piece for everybody -- but the rest of the food was all you could eat, and we tucked in. Dinner had been light for everyone on the ship, with the knowledge we'd basically be having a cookout after the ceremony.

"See? Wasn't that bad," I told Ashley, as we clinked our Mic Ultras together.

"Not that bad? I had to kiss that prick's fat gut," Ashley told me, shuddering. "I'll never get that image out of my head, Mer. And Mic Ultra? Could we get a beer with some actual booze in it? This might as well be an O'Douls," she added, shaking her head.

"Hey! I like Mic Ultra," I told her. "It keeps me in such fine shape," I said, gesturing to my body.

"Me too," the Chief said, sidling up to us, and tapping her beer with ours. "How else are we supposed to torture all these boys, Ash? Nobody wants a beer gut like Hogg, right?"

We looked over to see Hogg pulling on his beer, his big belly still shining with grease in the torchlight. I got the feeling the one-beer-only thing didn't apply to him. And then I confirmed it as he drained his beer and immediately opened another one.

The party lasted another hour or two, before it started to break up. The stewards cleaned up the pool area, brought the leftovers back to the galley, and the engineers all headed back to their cabins because they had to be up in the morning. I had watch in six hours or so, but I wasn't tired. Ashley gave me a quick hug and headed up to her room, and I walked over and stood next to the Chief.

"This was fun. Feels like the crew is bonding," I told her.

"It does. Nothing like letting off a little steam, especially before we get into more dangerous waters," she said. She had a gleam in her eye. "I should probably get some rack time, but I'm not really tired," she told me. "You care to join me in my locker for a little night cap?"

She tilted her head to look at me. She was still in her mop costume, her long blonde hair hanging down. My heart started to beat faster. The Chief had offered to let Ash and I visit her in the bosun's locker, but neither of us had taken her up on it yet. By the time we got off duty, we were usually so tired we barely had time to play some games together or watch a show before we were ready to pass out. Plus, Ashley had Julien to play with.

This would be my first real chance to get the Chief alone outside of the gym.

"I'd love to," I said, trying not to seem too eager.

"Follow me," she told me. We left the pool area behind, climbed down the companionway, and made our way to the bosun's locker. It was a bright night, the stars were high and clear in the sky, and the moon was full. Not a cloud blocked the view, and even without the lights along the deck, we'd have been able to see.

The bosun's locker was a converted container near the house, the main crew area of the ship that included the bridge, the mess deck and the berthing decks. The locker was filled with ship stores and lit up by a large electric lantern. The Chief led me around stacks of cordage, buckets filled with what looked like kitty litter -- for oil spills and pollution containment, she told me -- and all kinds of other assorted gear, to a small little nook she'd crafted for herself, with a couple of plastic chairs next to a piece of plywood hammered on top of a frame of two-by-fours to form a desk. One of the plastic chairs was heaped with paper. Under the desk was a small, portable space heater, and top of the desk was covered with even more paperwork, all the detritus she had to keep track of, including inventories and other assorted documents. There was a cardboard box underneath, next to the space heater, and from it she lifted a half-full bottle of Titos vodka. She had a couple of paper coffee cups, into which she poured a small dose of the clear liquid and handed me one.

"Just one. You've got watch in five hours," she said, wagging a finger at me. I smiled, and we knocked back our drinks.

"It's cozy in here," I said, looking around at the room. There was an old-fashioned pin-up girl calendar, the kind you found in better autobody shops, hanging from the wall, Xs through each day of our current voyage. The girls were pure cheesecake, and it made me laugh that the Chief kept something like that here. There were a few photos of her in her Navy gear pinned around. There was also a large shadowbox, with rows of Navy medals and two pins, the fouled anchor, large USN and two stars of a Master Chief Petty Officer flanking the five rows of ribbons, surrounded by a bunch of small ropes tied in intricate sailor's knots. I recognized a few -- an anchor hitch, a bowline knot, a figure eight knot. There were others that were highly intricate, that looked almost artistic. It was clear the Chief had been working on the box, and I assumed those knots were hers, as were the rows of medals. Above the ribbons was a silver pair of wings with a fouled anchor in the center and the words "Air Warfare" in a small banner underneath.

I wasn't an expert on Navy ribbons, but I knew a bit because of Mom, and I recognized a few of them. The first on the first row was a Silver Star, and next to it was the dark red and white of the Legion of Merit. The last medal of the first row was white, red and blue, with a 'v' device in the center. A Bronze Star with Combat 'V' for valor. If these were the Chief's, it was clear she'd seen combat -- hell, she was a bonafide hero. The second row was led by a purple and white ribbon that everybody recognized. The Purple Heart. Beside it was a red and white medal with one gold star in the center, and next to that was a green and white one, with four gold stars. In the very last row at the bottom, I saw a dark blue ribbon with three thin green lines and a silver "E" that I thought I recognized as an expert rifle marksmanship medal. Underneath the ribbons were five gold service stripes, each denoting four years of service -- five meant twenty years.

I couldn't believe it. I looked closely at the photos of her, but she wasn't in a uniform with ribbons in any of them, so I couldn't confirm that these were all hers, and not her father's or someone else's. But I had no reason to think they weren't hers. There was a lot of history in that box, and I was desperate to ask her about it, if it wasn't too personal.

There was one photo on her desk she had framed that was different from all the rest. It looked pretty old, and was of two sailors in their blues, one with the red stripe of a Petty Officer Third Class on her arm. Her other arm was around another woman, who had the one and a half gold braids of a Lieutenant Junior Grade on her arms. It was a grainy photo, and it was hard to make out who the two women were in the feeble light. Before I could get a closer look, Clarissa turned the photo flat against the table and then piled all the paper that had been on the second plastic chair on top of it, to make room for me.

The bosun's locker wasn't much to look at, but it was private. No cameras in here, no phones, just the chairs, the paperwork, the record of a life at sea, and Clarissa Larsen.

"It's a nice place to get away from everything for a while, especially when the weather is rough. You're a good luck charm, Meredith Madsen. We've had spectacular weather this entire run," she said, nodding at me. Her face looked enchanting in the dim light from the single lantern hanging from the ceiling.

"Oh, I don't know about that," I said, feeling a bit nervous, being here, alone with the Chief.

My self-control was slipping. I knew it was slipping. The more time I'd spent with Clarissa, the more I wanted her. I had kept my cool so far, using a mixture of my vibrator and work to keep the edge off. The vibrator helped chill my hormones, and the work tired me out so my mind would wind down and let me get out of my own head.

But between the Titos and the beer, the beautiful night with the full moon, the stars above us looking so bright and clear, like somebody had scattered diamonds across the floor of a dark room, I felt my inhibition slipping away like sand in a minuteglass.

I wanted her. I wanted her more than I'd wanted anything in my life, save the sea. I looked at her, and I guess my face gave it away, because I saw the Chief look at me funny, raising her eyebrows, and cocking her head. We were both still standing. Neither of us had taken a seat in either of the plastic chairs.

A sudden impulse came over me. I don't know where it came from. I wasn't drunk, not even close, but I felt good and safe, and I felt that telltale tingle in my crotch. Suddenly, my mind went blank, and I just acted.

I sat my cup on the makeshift desk and swiftly crossed the two feet of space between me and the Chief. She looked startled at first, and I saw her eyes go wide, right before I squeezed mine shut.

I leaned my head back, and dove in. I mashed my lips against hers, putting my arms around her shoulders and hugging her tight to me. It was not an erotic kiss, not a demure kiss -- it was a raw, passionate, clumsy as fuck kiss. No tongue, no open mouth, just four lips pressed together.

I stepped back and let her go, and instantly I realized I had fucked up. Goddamn it. She'd given me no reason to think she was into me, that she'd asked me back here to make out. She was twice my age, for fuck's sake, and we'd never talked about anything like this. I'd just kissed her, without her permission.

I suddenly felt lightheaded, red in the face, and I began to hyperventilate. "I'm... I'm sorry... I--I shouldn't have done that..." I said, stammering. I couldn't even bring myself to look at her.

I had completely fucked this up, and I felt like I was going to throw up. "I'm sorry, Chief. I've gotta go," I spat, spinning on my heel, and making a beeline for the door to the Bosun's locker.

"Mer! Wait!" the Chief said, and I heard her move behind me, but I was too fast. I was through the door, and burst into a sprint, shimmying up the nearby ladder and through the watertight door to enter the house. I didn't wait for the elevator, climbing ladder after ladder until I got to the deck my cabin was on. I flung the door open and hurled myself into my bunk.

I rolled over and stared at the ceiling. I wanted to cry, I willed the tears to come, but they didn't. I had ruined everything. I wanted her so badly that I had let myself cross a line that I shouldn't have -- I'd broken Daddy's "don't shit where you eat rule" pretty significantly -- and now I would have to pay the price for it.

We were barely halfway through this part of the voyage, and now I'd have to spend the rest of the trip knowing I'd done something spectacularly stupid.

Her lips felt so good on mine, though. Her body was taut and firm under my arms, just like I'd imagined. I could still see the look of shock in her eyes as I moved in towards her. Shock, but not revulsion.

I had a little less than four hours until I had to be on watch. I set my alarm and tried to close my eyes and get some sleep, but it was almost impossible. Every time I closed my eyes, all I could feel was the Chief's lips on mine.

I laid there tossing and turning for hours, wallowing in my shame.

* * *

South Atlantic Ocean

14 April 2025

1600 hours (4:00 PM local)

Eighteenth day of voyage

My emotions were all over the place, but I did my best to tamp them down and focus on the job at hand. I stood my 0400-0800 watch, racing out of the bridge before sunrise. I skipped lunch, skipped our workouts and didn't meet the Chief for our normal pre-watch walkaround.

When 1600 rolled around, I was on the bridge, standing my watch, and Sleepy Pete, the third mate, was sitting in the captain's chair yawning and scratching himself in dark places, AB Johnson standing by the tiny circle that was the ship's wheel. Most of the actual maneuvering was done by joysticks, knobs and levers on the integrated bridge controls, but I think it appealed to something in the nautical brain to have at least something that looked like a wheel on the bridge. The ordinary seaman who rounded out our bridge crew was out on the bridge wing, as always.

I got myself a cup of coffee, hoping the caffeine and the familiar flavors would calm my nerves. I spilled a packet of Splenda all over the counter, like an idiot, and I almost slopped the coffee all over myself. I was still pretty rattled by what had happened.

I filled out my standard watch paperwork, noted our speed, exact position and the like in the ship's log, got the third mate to sign off on everything, and then took a step off the bridge onto the wing with the ordinary, hoping a breath of fresh air would calm me down.

I had no idea what I was going to say to the Chief when I saw her. What I did was inappropriate, and I knew it. I could try to argue that I couldn't help myself, but I was a grown ass woman, and I should be able to govern my impulses, a couple drinks or no drinks. I knew the booze was just an excuse -- even a teenager wouldn't have gotten drunk off a beer and a shot in an hour. I had let my hormones take control and I knew better and was raised better than that. I was just like Ashley, a randy slut -- not that there's anything usually wrong with that - and I had broken Daddy's paramount rule, just like Ash did. She didn't have the same code, though, so she could do what she wanted. I did have that code, however, and I'd broken it. Badly.

And the worst part? I would probably do it all again if I had the choice.

I knew it was wrong, but it felt so right.

How could something that felt so right be wrong?

I wrestled with that question, one that had stymied better women and men than I. It was a question that was at the heart of dozens of hit songs. I thought and thought, debated and considered, all without resolving a thing. Yet, even more puzzling to me, was the other question my brain kept circling back around to.

What did the Chief think?

I raised a pair of the bridge binoculars to my eyes, did a sweep of the horizon. There was a tanker and a bulk ship along the same track we were on -- this was a pretty busy stretch of ocean, thanks to the Houthis -- and I confirmed their positions, then started to lower my binoculars. Thank God they were on a strap around my neck, because I almost dropped them when I heard the voice behind me.

"Midshipman Madsen?" The voice said. It was dark and smoky, and I knew who it belonged to immediately. I still gave an involuntary jump, as I turned to see the Chief, dressed in her usual blue boiler suit and hard hat, standing before me.

"Oh, Chief. Good afternoon," I said, doing my best to sound pleasant, even though my stomach was doing its best to climb out of my body and throw itself down the port gangway.

"We need to talk, Midshipman. Follow me, please," she said, turning.

My heart started pumping. Shit. I was going to get chewed out. She was going to bring me to the captain, tell him what I did. I was going to get fired, drummed out of the Merchant Marine, drummed out of King's Point, my career over before it started. I could feel hot pin pricks under my eyelids, but I suppressed the tears and simply followed her.

She led me off the bridge, down a few ladders until we came to an area that was empty, outside the superstructure of the ship, the stacks of containers looming above us.

"You mind explaining why you stood me up, Midshipman?" the Chief asked me. She had a stern look on her face.

"I don't know what you mean," I stammered. I knew exactly what she meant. I'd been avoiding her, and she knew it.

"How many times now have we watched the sunrise together? How many times have we worked out? Gotten lunch? And what about your pre-afternoon watch walkthrough with me? Where the fuck have you been?" She asked, a hint of exasperation in her voice. She looked almost angry, but it seemed like she was angry because she hadn't seen me, not because of what happened last night. "How many more times are you going to blow me off today?" she demanded.

"Chief, I'm sorry. After what happened earlier--"

"Yes, what happened earlier?" she asked me, taking a step forward. I felt a lump in my throat. She was barely a foot away from me now, and even in the boilersuit, my body was reacting to being so close to hers.

"I'm sorry. What I did was inappropriate--"

"You're goddamn right it was inappropriate," she barked at me. "You kiss me, then you run off with barely a word! Am I that bad a kisser? I know I must have looked hideous with that mop bra and skirt on, but that doesn't explain why you ran off so quickly," she said, taking another half step towards me.

She didn't look angry now. She looked... hungry?

Was this happening? I looked up into her eyes, my eyes flitting back and forth, taking in the green. She was so close I could see the tiny flecks of brown in the green, could see each line around her eyes, around her mouth, could see how smooth her skin was, the squiggles on her lips.

"How about you give me a second chance?" she said, looking at me. I stared up at her, and I knew my face was betraying my inner desire, my longing for her. I couldn't make my mouth work, so I just nodded slightly, a few times, and then it was happening.

She kept getting closer to me, and I just stood still. My heart was beating a mile a minute. Soon, there was nothing else in my vision except her. I closed my eyes, and I was rewarded with the soft feeling of her lips against mine. They felt wonderful, and I melted into her, my lips finding hers, my mouth opening slightly, my tongue stretching out, seeking, probing, desperate. My tongue found hers and soon our lips and mouths were one, dancing together. I wrapped my arms around her neck and pulled her to me, and she wrapped hers around my waist.

Then she picked me up, like I weighed nothing, and spun me around. I wrapped my legs around her waist, and she just held me like that, spinning slowly, as we explored each other. She was so strong, so sexy, and I felt my whole body begin to quiver with excitement.

I don't know how long we kissed like that, but it wasn't long enough for me. I wanted more, so much more. But I was on duty, and unlike Harry or Pete I couldn't spend half an hour off the bridge without someone noticing. I slowly, but reluctantly, began to pull away from Clarissa. I unwrapped my legs from her waist, and she lowered me to the deck reluctantly.

Our kiss broke and I gasped. I was breathing heavily, and I felt my pussy flooding with moisture. Every nerve ending was acute, and my nipples were throbbing, the warm metal piercings enhancing the feeling.

"See? I told you I'm a better kisser than last night," she whispered to me.

"I never doubted you for a minute," I told her, a small smile breaking out on my face.

"Why did you run?" She asked me, reaching up and caressing my cheek.

"I was scared," I told her. "I didn't know if you wanted this. I wanted it so badly, but I could have been reading you completely wrong, and we're coworkers and Daddy always told me not to get involved with coworkers and--"

She put two fingers, two rough, callused fingers, on my lips. "Don't worry about any of that. You weren't reading me wrong, and I don't tend to get involved with coworkers either. And since the ships I've been on have largely been all men since I signed up, it's never been a problem before. But you," she said, kissing my forehead. "You are just too perfect to believe."

My heart swelled as I heard that voice I'd been dreaming about confirm my wildest fantasies. She liked me, too! I wanted to scream 'yipeee!' and go running around the deck like a madwoman. I wanted to jump up to the top of the bridge and sound the foghorn! I wanted to run down to the engine room and piss in Porky Pig's morning coffee!

But more than anything, I wanted to tear off my clothes, and hers, and make mad, passionate love to her right here in this random nook on the main deck, the stacks of containers towering over us. I knew I couldn't do that.

"You've gotta get back on the bridge, so let's put this on hold until later, okay? We'll have plenty of time this trip to get to know each other better, and we've got to be discreet or this will end up all over the ship and neither of us want that, okay?" She said, taking a step back and looking up and down and around to confirm we were still alone.

"Okay, that sounds good," I said, still in a daze. I didn't know what else to say at this point. What do you say when you get everything you've ever wanted?

"Good. I'll see you tonight. No more running away, got it?" She said, playfully.

I leaned over and gave her a quick peck on the lips. "No more running," I confirmed.

I don't know how I got back on the bridge, but I did. That was the fastest watch I ever stood, the minutes flying by. All I could think of was how good she felt, how her lips felt against mine, her body against mine, and I couldn't wait until that night.

Unfortunately, I had to wait a little longer than I had anticipated.

Captain Lawrence came on the bridge right at the end of my watch, right around 2000. He had a sheet of paper in his hand. It was a weather report, and it looked like the days of sweet sailing we had were over. It was going to blow something fierce, starting in a couple of hours, so the Chief was ordered to get the ship rigged for heavy weather.

The captain had me stick around past the end of my watch, so I missed dinner. The waves were getting larger and larger, and the bridge was suddenly bustling with activity, especially for how late in the day it was. Captain Lawrence was there, along with First Mate Mugridge, Johnson and another AB I didn't know very well were at the helm, and both bridge wings had ordinary seamen manning them, on lookout.

The ship was rolling heavily, as we continued our track south towards the Cape. The waves turned the minutes to hours, the wind was howling, the bridge window wipers going full blast, even though we couldn't see anything in the murk outside of the ship other than the rain and water coming aboard that was lit up by the lights along our deck. Green water was breaking over the bow of the ship and washing backwards along the deck, pouring out of the scuppers and back into the sea. Somewhere out there, I knew the Chief was making sure everything was ship shape, monitoring the containers to make sure they were safe and none of them rolled overboard -- a not infrequent occurrence in heavy weather -- and that the crew was safe.

I wished I was getting overtime pay because I stayed on the bridge another four hours. I stayed as long as the weather was this bad and for some reason, the Captain wanted me on the bridge. I think it was largely to get the experience of seeing how the ship was handled in bad weather. I was monitoring the radar, and updating him with weather updates as we got them. The storm was moving away quickly, but it was the first in a line that would be harrying us throughout a good chunk of this leg of the trip, until we finally rounded the Cape of Good Hope and headed north towards Oman.

I didn't end up getting off watch until well after midnight, ship's time. I lurched my way through the ship, not even thinking about getting any night lunch, and I fell into my rack fully clothed and was asleep almost instantly. I had to be up in four hours for my next watch.

The last thing I remembered before my eyes fluttered shut was the feel of Clarissa's lips on mine.

* * *

Indian Ocean

24 April 2025

1315 hours (1:15 PM local)

Twenty-eighth day of voyage

The dirty weather dogged us for the next ten days. Even the captain said he'd seen nothing like it. The remnants of the storms that had hit us on the other side of Africa had lingered and harried us even when we'd slunk between the mainland and Madagascar to get away from them. It finally slacked off, right as we were reaching the Horn of Africa, a notorious area for pirates.

It was just our luck -- the rough weather would have been welcome then, to keep the small pirate boats in port. But my luck had seemed to run out. I guess I had used it all up to finally get Clarissa interested in me and willing to do something about it.

The Chief and I barely got to see each other. We'd sometimes meet in the galley, sometimes on the bridge. The sunrises were so dirty it wasn't worth meeting for them anymore and she'd often be stuck on deck working anyway. Twice we contrived to get alone, and we spent a few furtive minutes sucking face, but that's as much as we could do. There was just never time, or when there was time, we were both so exhausted that no matter how much we desired it, we knew we needed sleep more than sex.

The bad weather had wreaked havoc with the ships making the Cape run, and we found ourselves one among a half dozen ships on the horizon, all headed north to various ports in the Middle East. Most of these were foreign flagged ships, some much larger than us, some smaller. Some were carrying containers, others were bulk carriers hauling raw materials and grain, and we saw two ULCCs -- ultra-large crude carriers, the big daddy tankers, some of the biggest ships on the ocean -- who were heading towards the Persian Gulf refineries.

Once the weather cleared up, Clarissa and I began our normal routine of watching the sunrise together. Now, though, we surreptitiously held hands as well as coffee, and more than once I rested my head on her shoulder -- but only when we were alone.

We'd not done anything but kiss, so far, and not much of that, but I felt a connection to her that was deep and real, and I think she felt the same way. We were just taking it slowly, focusing on the job first and whatever it was that was happening between us second.

We were looking forward to our first time getting to workout together in nearly two weeks when the alarms sounded.

"All hands to your muster stations, all hands to your muster stations, this is not a drill, I repeat this is not a drill, this is a real situation," came the voice of Captain Combover through the loudspeakers outside the mess deck as the Chief and I were about to head to the gym. We were both in our sweats. I took off for the bridge, and she followed me.

When we got there, the bridge was filling up. Johnson had relieved the ordinary who was on the helm, and both Captain Lawrence, First Mate Mugridge, Harry the Squirrel and Sleepy Pete were there. This was the first time I had seen all the deck officers on the bridge at the same time. We had been sailing without a second mate, who was supposed to meet the ship at Jebel Ali. The wings were manned by two ABs I knew by sight but hadn't talked to.

The Chief went over immediately and looked at the radar. There were close to a dozen blips, most of them traveling in the same direction as us. I looked at the AIS, which had more information, and saw the two other container ships, the bulker and the two big tankers. One of the tankers had altered course and was heading closer to us. She was still more than five miles away.

But I wasn't paying attention to the tanker because I saw four unidentified small moving objects coming up from the southwest. We were heading north and had just cleared the Horn.

"Boss, we need you to give us maximum RPMs, as fast as we can go," Mugridge was barking into one of the ship's telephones, clearly talking to Hogg in engineering.

Over at another station, the captain was shouting. "What do you mean no one is available? This is the Cleveland, we've got defense cargo on board! There's supposed to be a carrier group in the Red Sea!"

A clipped male voice with a British accent rose up through the tinny speaker. "The Truman group headed south six days ago, you passed them on your way north. We won't have assets in the area for another few days, Cleveland. Speed up to flank, follow your anti-boarding protocols, rig your firehoses and hope they go for someone slower than you."

"Are you fucking kidding me?" I had never seen the captain so livid. His golden face had taken on a deep crimson. The Chief looked at me and then back down at the radar. I could tell she was ashamed that this was the answer UKMTO had for us. Sleepy Pete went pale as a sheet.

UKMTO - United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations - was the primary anti-piracy liaison in this sector of the Indian Ocean. It covered the Red Sea, Arabian Sea, Persian Gulf, Gulf of Aden, and the Indian Ocean down to right above the Equator. They were our main liaison with the U. S. Navy and allied anti-piracy assets in the region.

And they had no assets available. We were on our own.

I saw the big tanker was closer now, three miles away. The four fast moving targets were breaking off, each tailing a different ship. One of them was chasing us.

"Thanks for nothing, MTO," the captain said, smashing his hand on the speaker button and ending the call. I could see the Chief flinch.

"All ahead flank," the captain called to Johnson, who pushed the engine telegraph all the way forward. The ship lurched ahead, and I watched as the speed indicator ticked up until we topped out at 25 knots. "Come left to three four zero," he ordered.

"Aye, sir, left to three four zero," Johnson responded acknowledging the order. I looked out the window to our right. The big tanker was sailing closer and closer. It had looked like we would avoid each other, until the captain ordered the course change. Now I wasn't so sure.

I looked over at the radar. The skiff was still chasing us, but it looked like we had increased the distance. The captain stepped out onto the bridge wing, looking aft through a pair of ships binoculars. I noticed the two lookouts were doing the same thing.

My heart was beating faster and faster. Everyone's attention on the bridge was focused on the skiff behind us. Even Johnson, at the controls, had been looking behind him, even though he couldn't see anything. The Chief had been staring at the AIS and the radar, and the lookouts, Captain Lawrence, Chief Mate Mugridge and Harry the Squirrel were all on the bridge wings, staring aft. Sleepy Pete was nowhere to be seen.

I looked up and saw the big tanker looming off to starboard. I took a step forward, up close to Johnson, who had turned around and saw what I was seeing. I looked up to see where the Chief was, to see if she was seeing what I was seeing, and she wasn't there. I didn't have time to consider where she'd gone, because Johnson suddenly spoke up.

"Uh, Mer? You think that's going to be a problem?" He said, nodding towards the big tanker that was maintaining a steady bearing to us. The tanker was far slower than we were, but she appeared to be moving as close to us as she could, for whatever reason.

"Jesus Christ, they're shooting!" I heard Captain Combover exclaim. I heard some pops, but my attention was focused on the big tanker.

"Johnson, that tanker is going to hit us," I said. This was basic marine safety. CBDR -- constant bearing, distance reducing. It was what was drilled into you about basic ship handling and how to avoid a collision at sea. You see that, it's time to maneuver before it's too late.

Johnson looked at me. "What do I do?"

I looked at the tanker again to confirm what I thought was happening. The bearing to her was constant, and our distance was reducing steadily, yard by precious yard. She'd been five miles away when I'd gotten to the bridge, but she was less than half a mile away now and rapidly closing. It was clear she wasn't paying attention to us any more than we'd been paying attention to her -- her turn to port to try to get closer to us was taking her right across our path, and unless one of us moved, we were going to hit. We couldn't afford to wait for them to figure out what was happening and maneuver, especially if they were focused solely on the skiff and trying to get away.

The captain wasn't there, and neither was the first mate or either of the third mates. I was the only person who could give the order to turn the ship away from the tanker before we collided. Johnson was looking at me, waiting to be told what to do.

"Johnson, left full rudder! Turn us out of the path of that tanker!"

"Aye, ma'am!"

He spun the tiny ship's wheel over as far as it could go, and the ship lurched to port, turning rapidly away from the tanker's track.

The move caused the captain's head to snap around, and he barged back onto the bridge.

"Johnson! Why the fuck are we turning?"

"Sir, the tanker, sir!" He shouted, pointing to the big looming tanker that was slowly sliding away from us.

"Steady up on two seven zero!" the captain ordered, looking at the tanker and realizing how close we'd come to disaster.

"Sir, I gave the order," I told him. "You were all focused on the skiff. We had to avoid a collision with that tanker," I added by way of explanation.

Captain Lawrence went as pale as someone as tanned as he could get. "Damn good work, Madsen," he told me.

We were out of the frying pan, but the fire was still burning. The skiff took advantage of our turn to port and now was gaining on us. I looked at the radar and saw the other three skiffs had turned around, concluding they couldn't catch any of the ships still out there.

"You did the right thing," he added. "Let's just hope it doesn't get us all killed," he muttered under his breath. "That skiff is still coming."

"Sir! The skiff!" yelled Captain Combover.

Lawrence hustled across the bridge to the other wing and saw that the skiff had closed the distance. I didn't know it at the time, but it had been firing randomly at the tanker, and the tanker had been returning fire -- apparently, they had a security team aboard that was armed. Because the tanker was fighting back, the skiff had altered course to intercept us.

The captain got on the ship wide speakers. "All hands, prepare to repel boarders. Man the firehoses," he ordered.

"I got this," I heard from behind me. I turned and saw the Chief coming onto the bridge. She had what appeared to be an assault rifle in her hands. We didn't normally carry guns, but she was a retired Master Chief with a chest full of medals. Some rules just didn't apply to her.

"Chief, you don't need to do this," Captain Lawrence said. "We can repel them with the firehoses," he said.

"Yeah, that worked real well for the Alabama, didn't it?" She scoffed, crossing the bridge to the starboard side wing, where Captain Combover was still hyperventilating over the skiff and how close it was getting. I looked at the radar and saw the skiff had closed the distance to two hundred yards. We were moving steadily away from the tanker, heading due west, and even though the tanker was close to ten knots slower than us, the skiff knew it could intercept us and had altered course to do so. They were shooting back, and we weren't, so we were the better target.

The Chief steadied her rifle on the railing that surrounded the bridge wing. She was about to change that.

"Stand clear!" she hollered, and everybody out there stepped away, including Mugridge and the ordinary who had been on look out. They all ran into the bridge and crossed to the port side to watch the skiff as it barreled closer and closer to us. I followed them, as the captain had sat down in his chair to focus on the instruments and was in full command on the bridge. I think he was shaken by how close we'd come to ramming the tanker, and didn't want to be distracted by the skiff.

The Chief began shooting.

The sound of the shots echoed loudly. Harry the Squirrel slapped his hands up over his ears. We saw white splashes begin to land around the skiff, her shots landing short. She was shooting at a moving target from a moving platform at more than two hundred yards -- nobody could fault her for missing.

They returned fire, and soon it was a duel between the Chief and the shooters on the skiff. This lasted maybe two minutes. The Chief emptied one magazine, reloaded and took aim again at the skiff, as it continued to pepper us with shots from long range.

The Chief sighted down the barrel and began to fire again. I watched as the white splashes crept closer and closer to the skiff. The first one to hit the skiff sent up a spark and the skiff driver ducked. Two more shots found their way aboard, and then I heard the Chief let loose a quick succession of shots.

The skiff exploded.

This was not a small explosion, like she'd hit the gas tank. It was a major explosion, sending up a geyser of water, a mass of black smoke, and a shock wave that I could feel on my face, even from this distance. The sound came shortly thereafter - a low boom that rattled the windows on the bridge and felt like a punch to my chest.

"Holy shit! Chief did it! Holy shit!" Captain Combover shouted, whooping for joy and jumping up and down. All of us out on the bridge wing let up a massive cheer, hugging each other.

We ran onto the bridge, through it and over to the other bridge wing, where everybody was trying to get their hands on the Chief, to pat her on the back, cheer her, congratulate her for saving the ship.

She was having none of it and shoved everyone away. I wasn't sure what the problem was -- why wasn't she basking in the glow of having saved the ship?

"Captain, get back on the horn to UKMTO right now. That wasn't a fucking pirate skiff. That was a suicide bomber. There were enough explosives on that skiff to punch a hole in our hull and sink us. One shot from my M4 shouldn't have caused that kind of an explosion," she said.

That sobered all of us up immediately.

The captain did as the Chief suggested. After that, everything else seemed anticlimactic. We were ordered to continue on to Salahah at best speed. We settled down to twenty knots to keep from burning out the engines and to give Boss Hogg a break -- he'd been freaking out about max RPMs until the captain told him what had just happened.

That evening, the captain called us all together on the mess deck and gave us the full run down on the incident, including my saving the ship from collision with the tanker and the Chief saving us from the suicide bomber. The rest of the crew, even Porky Pig, looked at both of us with newfound respect, and a few of the guys even clapped me on the back. It felt good.

We were three days from Salahah.

This was the first time this entire voyage when I wasn't thinking about Clarissa naked.

We'd dodged two bullets today, but who knew what tomorrow held?

* * *

Salahah, Oman

28 April 2025

2100 hours (9:00 PM local)

Thirty-second day of voyage

The three days after the incident with the pirates were tense but passed uneventfully. I was exhausted. We kept up double watches the entire time, waiting to see if the other three skiffs would come after us, but they didn't. We outran most of the ships that had been around us, and I have never been more relieved than I was when we dropped anchor off Salahah. Ten hours later, we were beside the terminal, the cranes working to offload a good portion of our containers. The rest would be taken off at Jebel Ali in a few days. The bad weather had knocked us off schedule, although we made up some time with our faster steaming thanks to the pirates.

The captain made an announcement that we'd be having a pool party that night to celebrate our successfully navigating the bad weather and the pirates. He even said "splice the mainbrace," which was old Navy terminology for break out the booze. It looked like Boss Hogg was going to get to drink those cases of beer and liquor he'd smuggled aboard at Tanger Med.

The entire crew, even the captain, made an appearance at the party, and the beer and liquor flowed.

"Can I buy you a drink?" Ashley said, handing me a Mic Ultra, still dripping with condensation from one of the yeti coolers spread around the pool. The stewards had outdone themselves, and we had hotdogs and hamburgers with almost fresh buns, fresh fruit, and the beer limit was lifted because we were in port.

"Why thank you, kind lady," I told her laughing. We clinked bottles and I took a long pull off my beer.

"How does it feel to be a hero?" Ash asked me, raising her eyebrows. "Even Boss Hogg acknowledges what you did was above and beyond for a deck cadet," she told me.

"Maybe he'll stop with his woman hating for a few days," I said.

She snorted. "Of course not. He said what you did was above and beyond and then he started in on the Chief. Called her 'reckless' and told anyone who'd listen that 'the dyke wanted to get us all killed,' and that he couldn't believe she'd had a gun onboard this whole time and nobody knew it."

"The captain knew about it," I told her. Clarissa and I hadn't had a chance to be alone while we were all on double watches, but we did manage to get lunch the day after the attack, and I'd asked her point blank -- pun intended -- about the gun. I explained to Ash what Clarissa had told me. Essentially, she'd said, she'd done a lot of things in the Navy and because of those things, she got special permission to have the gun onboard. She hadn't told me much more than that, and I just took what she told me at face value. I was angry that Hogg was so ungrateful, and that he was willing to give me credit but not Clarissa.

"That's not fair," I told Ashley. "She saved the ship just as much as I did. The collision could have severely damaged us, but that bomb could have sunk us. I can't believe that Porky Pig can't see that," I growled. I was getting protective of the Chief, and Ashley knew it.

"Mer, Porky Pig's head is so far up his own ass, I don't think he can see much of anything, except maybe Captain Combover's head, which I am pretty sure is up there with him," she said, nodding over at the two of them.

The two men were laughing and thumping each other on the back, a case of Miller Lite on the deck between their seats, half the cans empty already.

"Be careful, Ash," I told her. Feelings were running high all around the crew right now. We'd survived bad weather, the pirates, and the Houthis had left us alone -- so far -- and everybody was feeling the relief and wanting to blow off some steam. Even the captain had a beer in his hand, although I never saw him take a sip from it.

"Mer, I can handle myself. Hogg has been relatively nice to me the last three days. I think that's because of you, frankly," she told me. "So, thanks for that!"

I looked over at Porky Pig and Captain Combover, and saw that Hogg was staring over at us. He had a gleam in his eye when he looked at Ashley, but he saw me staring at him. He raised his beer can to me in salute, which I returned, and then he leaned over and said something to Mugridge that started the two men laughing again.

The knot in my stomach I felt the first time I'd interacted with Hogg started to form again.

Almost the entire crew was around the pool. Some of them were in it, splashing around, others were eating and drinking. There were a handful of people absent, including the Chief. Mugridge invariably delegated his cargo handling responsibilities to the Chief.

I wondered where she was. The party was fun, but I wanted to see her. She deserved a drink, especially after what she'd done. I thought she was a far bigger hero than I was.

"I'm going to go find the Chief," I told Ash. "Keep a weather eye out," I told her, nodding at Hogg and the other men.

"I'll be fine, Mer," she said, getting up and wandering over to Julien, who was still handing out burgers and hotdogs to the crew. He put his arm around her and gave her a quick hug. Their relationship was an open secret on the ship now, had been for weeks, and I guess they felt like a little PDA wasn't forbidden, especially after all we'd been through.

"Mer!" A voice called to me as I stood up and started to head towards the companionway that led to the main deck from the pool deck.

I turned, and saw AB Johnson coming over to me, two beers in his hand. "Let me get you a drink, shipmate," he told me. He had clearly had a few more beers than I had, and it was clear he wasn't used to them.

"Thanks, Johnson, but I'm good. Need to go walk off these fumes," I told him.

"I never got to thank you for what you did," he said, ignoring what I said and trying to thrust a beer into my hands. "You saved us all. I locked up, seeing what was happening," he admitted. He slurred his words just slightly. "I owe you big time," he concluded.

It hit me after a second that he was trying his best to flirt with me. Oh, poor, poor Johnson. He was sweet, had been nice to me, but he wasn't playing for the same team I was on. I felt my heart go out to him a bit and did my best to let him down gently.

"Don't sell yourself short," I told him. "You were the one at the wheel, and you never hesitated when I gave the order, even though I'm barely an officer. You did great, and I'm proud to call you friend," I told him. I slapped him on the arm.

He gave me a half-grin, but using the "F" word dampened any romantic illusions he'd been harboring. I could see a bit of fire go out in his eyes, and he got my message loud and clear.

"Anyway, I'm going to go walk the deck for a few. See you on watch, shipmate," I said. He waved at me, and then turned around, looking for someone else to hand the second beer he was holding.

I sighed, went down the companionway, and started forward towards the bow of the ship.

I found the Chief two-thirds of the way to the forepeak, signing off on some paperwork with the Salahah stevedore foreman. She turned when she saw me and smiled.

"I was just coming to find you," she told me, as the stevedore left, heading towards the gangway and back down to the pier. "That was the last bit of paperwork, and now I'm free. What do you say we take advantage of everybody being at the pool to get some... alone time?"

My heart leaped. It was finally going to happen! I was finally going to get laid. My heart was in my throat. I didn't say a word. I just took her by the hand and pulled her back towards the house.

We saw nobody, but we could hear the pool party still in full swing as we got closer and closer to the stern of the ship. We piled into the elevator, and I pushed the button for my deck.

As soon as the doors closed, the Chief pounced on me, and we began to kiss. Our tongues snaked out, twisting and dancing together, and I felt my whole body respond to her.

The doors opened, and I pulled her out and down the passageway to my cabin. I pulled open the door and pushed her in, looking up and down to make sure we were alone. Then I stepped in, closed the door and locked it behind me.

"Finally," I said. "We're alone."

The Chief looked around my cabin, which was sparse. Her eyes lit up when she saw Sharky on my bed and picked him up. She looked over at me and grinned broadly, and I thought I saw her eyes getting a little misty.

She said nothing though, but she put Sharky down on the small desk my laptop and Sea Project binder were resting on, along with my safety manual and a bunch of other paperwork.

"That's Sharky," I told her. "I've had him since I was a baby."

She just smiled at me and said nothing. I took a step closer to her and looked her up and down. She was still in her boilersuit, and I was in my khakis. She looked beautiful to me. Her eyes were still a little misty, but I could see an unmistakable look of lust in them, too.

This was the first time we'd truly been alone, with no responsibilities or chronometers looming over us since that first kiss almost two weeks ago.

I wanted her so badly, and now I could have her. And I was going to have her.

I unbuttoned my khakis, slowly, as I watched the anticipation rise in her eyes. With each button, more of my skin was revealed, and I was glad I had decided to wear the underwear [1], (sexy), I had kept in my sea bag for the entire trip. The bra was red and lacy, sheer enough that my nipples stood out, the piercings bright and shiny, my breasts firm and high up on my chest.

I pulled the rest of my shirt, now fully unbuttoned, out of my pants, and dropped it to the deck. Next, I undid my belt, the gold buckle and the khaki-colored cotton coming loose easily. I realized my boots were still on and I started to pull them off, hopping on one foot and eliciting a laugh from Clarissa, who reached over and helped me. Once they were off, I tossed them under the desk and continued to pull off my trousers.

Soon, those were pooled on the deck around my feet. I stood before Clarissa in my underwear, my sexy red bra and matching thong that barely covered my pussy and left my butt completely bare.

I heard a sharp intake of breath from her as she looked at me. She still said nothing, so I took a step closer and started to unzip her boilersuit. Before I got much past her collarbone, she stopped me.

"Let me get these boots off before I start hopping around like you did and spoil the mood," she said, playfully. Her voice tickled my ears and sent a shiver down my spine, like it always did. I could listen to her for hours.

She sat on my bunk, pulled off her steel-toed boots and dropped them heavily to the deck, next to her hard hat, which had been in her hand. She stood back up before me and grinned.

"Now, where were we?"

"Right about here," I said, reaching up and pulling the zipper down. As the zipper continued down, I started to see some pale skin emerge. She was wearing a sports bra that hugged her breasts close, and the same compression shorts she usually worked out in. She stepped out of the suit and threw it to the side. We both stood there, looking at each other, soaking up the images presented by our almost nude bodies.

Almost wasn't good enough. Clarissa stepped towards me, reached around and undid my bra. It popped loose, and I let it drop to the deck, my boobs on full display. She leaned over and hooked two thumbs under my thong and pulled it down and off, and soon I was completely bare before her.

She took a step back and took in the view. Her eyes were hungry, her lips just parted, and I could see a little throb in her neck -- her heart was beating as fast as mine was. I could almost smell her arousal.

I stepped forward and did the same to her. Her sports bra zipped up the front. I leaned over and gripped the zipper with my teeth and pulled it down slowly. This was not the smartest idea, and it kind of hurt, but I had wanted to bury my face between those two gorgeous globes, had been fantasizing about seeing them up close for weeks now, and I couldn't help myself.

There was a familiar scent coming up from between her breasts, a mix of sweat and sea salt, mixed with some kind of flowery perfume that brought back long dormant memories of my childhood, for some reason. I had smelled that smell before, but I couldn't place it.

The zipper got stuck at the bottom, and I had to let go with my teeth and use my hands. I pulled hard on the zipper, and it came free, and I pulled her bra off, getting my first look at her breasts.

They were beautiful, moderately large -- larger than I had expected, honestly, given the clothing she usually wore that hid their fullness. Her areolas were small, coin sized, dark pink with small little bumps surrounding them, and she had fat pink nipples rising from the center that I immediately took into my mouth and began to suck on and nibble gently.

Clarissa moaned, and I felt one of her hands reach around behind my head, pulling me closer, while her other hand reached down and tugged at one of my piercings that was jiggling provocatively at her. It felt so good that I had to moan, this time, but not letting Clarissa's nipple free from my mouth.

I switched to her other nipple, leaving a trail of saliva from one to the other, my hands coming up to squeeze and caress them, my fingers wandering up until I felt a patch of skin that wasn't the same as the rest of her breasts, and I pulled back to look at it. Just above her right breast, in an area that had been concealed by the strap of her sports bra near her shoulder, was a patch of stippled, pink and white scar tissue in a vaguely star shape. I was staring at it, long enough that Clarissa cleared her throat.

"Old war wound," she told me. "Ignore it. Finish your task, Midshipman," she said with a grin.

I touched it again, feeling the difference from the surrounding skin -- I'd never seen anything like it before -- and then I tugged her compression shorts down. I don't know what I was expecting, but I was pleasantly surprised. Her ripped stomach and v-line abs, pointed straight down towards a small, blonde landing strip of pubic hair that led directly down towards her clit and labia. She had two tattoos, one on each side of her mons, similar in position to where my anchor was on my abdomen. On the left side was a small cartoon shark, with big grinning teeth that was about the size of my fist. On the right was a green dragon spitting fire, being impaled by a large yellow lightning bolt. Underneath was the word 'SLAYERS' in a similar font to the logo of the band 'Slayer' I'd seen in concert a few times when I was younger. It made me grin.

And when the scent of her womanhood hit my nose, it made my mouth water. She smelled so... feminine. That floral smell that lingered in the back of my brain was present, but so was that musky smell of female arousal that I knew so well. I could feel myself getting wet just breathing in the scent.

I paused as I got her shorts around her ankles, my body bent over and my face directly in front of her crotch. I held that position for a few moments, and I knew I needed to taste her. She knew it too, because she subtly started pulling us backwards towards my rack. I was a bit hesitant, didn't really feel like I should be the one taking the lead by moving us towards the bed, but I did. At least, until my brain actually kicked in and realized she was the one leading us, and I was just following. She laid down gently, spread her legs, directing me with her eyes to get on my knees and get my first good look at her lower half up close.

She had one of the prettiest pussies I had ever seen. She kept herself very clean, and her labia were slightly larger than mine. Poking out of the top was her clit, and it was far larger than I was expecting, nestled in her hood but totally visible. It was large, but not out of line with the rest of her Amazonian physique. I leaned in, taking a deep breath, and then slowly slid my tongue out and flicked it gently across her clitoris.

The effect was instant. She gasped, and I felt both of her hands on the back of my head.

"Oh God, Mer, please... do that again and keep doing it," she breathed, her dark, rich voice filled with yearning desire.

"Aye, ma'am," I said cheekily, and I began to lick and suck on her clit gently, moving my hands up her thighs. My probing digits found another of those strange, star shaped scars on the inside of her right thigh, until eventually I was holding her lips open with my left hand while my right began to work one finger, then two, then three, into her sopping pussy.

Clarissa moaned, loudly, and pushed my head down, grinding my face into her crotch. I picked up the pace, my tongue moving quicker, sliding in circles, making little shapes, darting in, lapping, then darting back, and I began to feel her legs shake, her thighs squeezing my head, as I continued my assault on her clit.

"Oh God, Mer, right there! Just like that! Keep going! Please don't stop!" she begged, and I did my best to follow her orders to the letter. I looked up, saw her chest moving up and down spasmodically, her breasts jiggling each time she trembled from the pleasure, her head thrown back, her hair still up in the French braid and her eyes squeezed shut.

I spent what felt like an eternity between her legs, but it couldn't have been much more than four or five minutes, when her breathing got even more erratic, her thighs even tighter on my face, and her hands grabbed fistfuls of my hair.

"Please, please, please... keep going. I'm going to cum... going to cum... cumming..." she breathed, murmuring the same phrases over and over, a low moan that rose steadily into a shriek of pleasure that ended with her jerking almost upright. I could feel her legs moving, her steel hard thighs twitching, and the three fingers I'd been pumping in and out of her pussy felt the rhythmic contraction inside her that signaled a mind-blowing orgasm. I kept going as long as I could as she began to buck like a bronco underneath me, finally squeezing my head so tight between her thighs I had to tap out, like we were in an MMA match.

"Sorry, sorry," she said, releasing her grip on my head. I looked up at her and grinned, pleased beyond measure with myself for making the Chief cum and doing it in such spectacular fashion. My face was covered in saliva and pussy juice. I slid slowly up her body, coming up off my knees, my breasts and my piercings rubbing along those taut thighs, up to her stomach, then resting on her boobs as mine and hers mashed together, and I was close enough to her face to kiss her.

She licked my face, my chin and my lips, tasting her own pussy, and driving me wild, before we began one of the longest, most sensual make out sessions I could ever recall. We kissed and nipped at each other for a solid few minutes, our tongues tangled, lips roaming up and down each other's faces. I couldn't get enough, and I didn't want it to stop.

Finally, I opened my eyes, and saw the Chief begin to stir, and soon she had wrapped her legs around my body, flipping me over onto my back. She raised her body up off of me, her breasts dangling erotically in front of me as she reached behind her and began to undo her braid. I took advantage of her hands being behind her head to reach up and grab two fistfuls of her breasts, feeling her big nipples in the palm of my hand, feeling her pulse racing as she undid her hair, and finally let it fall down around her shoulders. She leaned back down and kissed me, her blonde hair covering us like a blanket, and all I could see was her face in front of mine. All I could feel was her lips on mine, and it felt heavenly.

Her hands began to roam up and down my body. Those hard, calloused hands moved so gently and so lovingly. I could hear the song lyrics in my head...

"I watched her hands of leather... turn to velvet in a touch..."

She was my whole world at that moment, my goddess of the sea, and all I wanted to do was spend the rest of my days worshipping her. I felt like I was floating on an ocean of desire, the pent-up need of nearly a month at sea, a month of fantasy, of yearning, of denial, and finally of beautiful, glorious, gratifying fulfillment. Her lips trailed down my face and neck, down my chest, lingering at my breasts, nibbling and pulling on my barbells with her teeth, then continuing down, kissing my stomach, her tongue flicking into my belly button, then sliding down, kissing gently past my mons, a small kiss planted on my anchor tattoo.

Then she was finally there, at the entrance to my sex, and I felt the warm, all-consuming touch of her tongue on my clit. It was like I had been hit by lightning, and every nerve ending in the lower half of my body was on fire. I let loose a long, deep moan, my eyes snapping shut, as I focused on how good her mouth felt on my pussy. I felt her fingers sliding into me -- only two, because her hands were much larger than mine -- and soon she began to lick and pump in a steady rhythm that drove me wild with pleasure.

It didn't take long before I felt my own orgasm rising, and I began panting, pulling my nipple rings with my fingers, sending little shots of pleasure through my boobs with each tug. I looked down and watched as Clarissa whisked her long blonde hair behind her, looking up into my eyes as her mouth pleasured my nether regions.

We stared at each other like that -- I was afraid to close my eyes, afraid that if I did this dream I was having would be shattered and I'd wake up in my bunk alone. I looked deeply into those green eyes, saw the little flecks of brown twinkling in the light of my cabin, saw a look -- maybe not of love, not yet, but of deep, deep affection -- that made my heart skip a beat.

She kept up her rhythm, and my moans got louder and longer.

"I'm close," I whispered breathily. "Close, so close... so close!"

My fingers tugged more insistently on my nipples, and soon I felt that familiar tingling in my crotch that previewed a mind-blowing orgasm. I could feel it rising slowly, and steadily, and Clarissa kept up a steady pace that helped me climb higher and higher and higher, the wave hovering higher and higher and higher, until it finally crashed down, a mind-numbing, all-consuming orgasmic tidal wave that blotted out every thought, every other feeling in my body for seconds that felt like years. I screamed so loudly I shoved a fist into my mouth -- anybody anywhere near my cabin was sure to have heard it. I rocked back and forth, the waves of pleasure cresting over me until finally I fell back against my rack exhausted, the thin pillow I should have replaced a month ago barely cradling my head.

That was, by far, the greatest sex I'd ever had, and it wasn't over.

Clarissa climbed up next to me, and we began to kiss again, slowly exploring each other's bodies. The frantic desire to cum was gone from each of us, and now we were simply basking in our post-orgasmic glow, the joy of being together finally after being held apart so long. We touched and tasted, caressed and cuddled, whispered to each other sweet nothings, kissed and licked and just enjoyed ourselves.

We must have been in bed for a solid hour, but it felt like ten seconds. There was nowhere I wanted to be right now more than in Clarissa's arms. It felt like home, and I nestled up close to her.

"So.. this is love..." I started humming to myself, absent-mindedly. She grinned at me, and I could tell right away she recognized the tune.

She sighed, lying flat on her back, and I rolled over and slid under her arm, bringing my leg up to rest over hers, taking one of her breasts in my hand, my other arm cradling her head.

I could feel the exhaustion starting to take its toll on me, that pure bliss feeling of satisfaction beginning to drag me down towards sleep.

At least until we heard the commotion outside in the corridor.

At first, I couldn't figure out what it was, but it soon became clear that someone was running down the passageway, their steel-toed boots clip clopping loudly on the unforgiving steel deck. It made my knees hurt just to listen to it. I perked up, and so did the Chief.

"What's that?" she asked me quietly.

"I don't know," I responded. "Sounds like Ash."

The door next to mine slammed open and then slammed shut, and I could hear what I thought was sobbing, then the lock on the door clicked loudly.

"Oh fuck," I said. "It is Ash."

I stood up and started to throw my clothes on as quickly as I could. I left the sexy underwear on the deck -- there was no point in wasting time putting it on, but I threw on my pants and swiftly buttoned up my khakis and stepped into my boots.

Beside me, the Chief did the same thing, but I heard first one zipper, of her sports bra, and then the longer zipper of her boiler suit go up before she started cursing, trying to get her feet into those large, heavy boots the deck crew wore, just like the guys in the engine room.

A louder, deeper, thundering set of footsteps echoed outside in the corridor now. They were heavy and erratic, the tread of a man, and one who was not remotely close to being sober. They thudded onto the deck one after another, then a few in a stumbling row, and finally stopped outside Ash's door.

There was a resounding banging that shook my whole cabin, as a heavy fist came down multiple times on the door. Soon, we heard a deep male voice yelling.

"HINTON! Open up! You been making eyes at me all night girl, and now I'm going to give you what you want! You don't need that fucking punk ass kid! You need a REAL MAN!"

The words were distorted through the door, the deck and the bulkhead, but the voice was unmistakably that of Boss Hogg.

"That motherfucker," I heard the Chief say under her breath. I looked over, and all traces of our lovemaking were gone from her face. She looked as angry as I'd ever seen her, her face a dark thundercloud of rage.

It probably looked a lot like mine did. "I'm going to kill that fat fuck if he lays one finger on her," I growled.

We both stepped towards the door, but the Chief held me back by my shoulder. "No, Mer. Let me handle this. This is my responsibility."

"You're not an officer, Chief--"

"Fuck that noise, Mer. Doesn't matter. Hogg knows who wears the pants on this ship, and it sure as shit ain't him. Just trust me, and let me do my job," she ordered.

"I trust you," I stammered.

She nodded at me and then pulled the door to my cabin open. She didn't seem to care that she was coming out of my cabin, that the two of us were being seen together. She was focused solely on stopping Hogg from doing what it sounded like he was trying to do.

The Chief rounded on Hogg, who was standing in the hallway, his hand poised in the air to pound on Ashley's door again. When he saw Clarissa step out, followed by me, his face clouded over, and then his lips curled back in a sneer.

"Well, well, what do we have here? Two cunts, coming out of a cunt's room, smelling like cunt. What happened, Madsen? Did the Chief here pull you aside at the party and whisper 'lez be friends' in your ear? Jesus, she's old enough to be your mother!" he said, guffawing.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing, Hogg?" Clarissa said to him menacingly, taking a step forward. I saw her hands ball up into fists.

"Turn around and go back to bumping uglies in Madsen's dorm room and leave me to my courting," he spat.

I barked a laugh. "That's what you call this?" I said, from behind the Chief. She raised her hand up, signaling me to shut up, and I did.

"Go back to your fucking cabin and sleep this off, Hogg, you fat piece of shit! Do it now, and I won't have to tell the captain you were trying to sexually assault one of his crewmembers."

The threat of being reported did not make an impression on Hogg. But the "fat piece of shit" line got under his skin. He squared up with the Chief and raised his fists.

"Who do you think you're talking to, bitch?" he growled. "Nobody speaks that way to me on my ship!" he bellowed. And then he swung at her.

That was a mistake.

Hogg was drunk, drunk as I'd ever seen a man, and his coordination was off. He was relying on his size and his muscles to intimidate the Chief, but she was just as tall as he was and where he had gone to fat, she was muscle and sinew. She dodged his clumsy cross and jabbed her fist directly into his beer belly.

I could hear the air whoosh out of him, and he doubled over. She took a step forward and brought her knee up, avoiding his nose, which she could have easily broken, instead hitting him square in the forehead. His head whipped up, and he crumpled to the ground, moaning. He rolled over onto his back, laid out flat, his arms thrust to the sides, as he tried to regain his breath. The passageway wasn't wide enough for him to be able to lay prostrate with his arms stretched wide, and he began to beat his fists slowly against the bulkheads as he writhed in pain.

The Chief stepped up and put her foot on his neck and began to apply gentle pressure. His eyes went wide, and he reached up to try and pull her foot off, but he was too drunk to do it.

She held him there like that and then leaned over to look him in the eyes.

"Now you listen to me good, you fat tub of shit," she hissed. "You will not touch that woman. Not now, not ever. You will not retaliate against her for the rest of this voyage. In fact, you are going to give her the best assignments and let her do her fucking job. No more cleaning piss and shit out of the bilges. You got me? And if I see or hear that you have tried to touch her, or have called her names, or have even so much as farted in her general direction, I will come down to that engine room and I will shove my foot so far up your ass I'll give fucking Mugridge a bloody nose."

His eyes were wide and fearful, his hands slapping at her foot ineffectually, and I saw whatever defiance was left in them evaporate.

She leaned over him closely. "Now get the fuck out of here, before the whole goddamn crew hears you got your ass beat by a girl," she spat at him.

She lifted her boot off his neck, and he scrambled backwards, sliding along the deck until he finally got purchase with his hands, and stood up steadily. He turned and ran, stumbling down the passageway until he got to the other end, where he didn't wait for the elevator but took the ladder up and disappeared from sight.

I went over to Ash's door and knocked on it gently. "Ash? It's Mer. He's gone. Open up. We want to check on you," I said, hoping I was loud enough for her to hear me.

It took a few moments, but then we heard the lock snick back and the door opened, and Ashley peaked around to see me and the Chief standing there.

"Thank you," she whispered. "Thank you, thank you, thank you," she said, backing into the room, her face streaked with tears. "You were right. You told me not to drink, told me not to spend time with them. I should have listened. I'll never do it again, never, never, never," she said, then she broke down into tears, and collapsed onto her rack.

I sat down next to her, pulled her up and let her cry on my shoulder. The Chief stepped in and closed the door behind us, sat down in the chair at the small desk in the room, and just looked on. I brushed Ash's dark curly hair out of her face.

"We were all drinking and having a good time. Julien had to go clean up the galley and bring back the rest of the food. Everybody was having fun, you know. Then Hogg started trying to touch me. I didn't let him, told him to stop. Mugridge was there, saw the whole thing, and just laughed. Hogg wouldn't take no for an answer, so I got up and ran up here as fast as I could. He followed me, and you know the rest," she said, cuffing her nose angrily, her face a mess of snot and tears.

The Chief pulled a tissue from a box on the desk and handed it to her.

"But you're okay? He didn't actually touch you?" I asked her, looking her over. She seemed no worse for wear, just stinking of vodka and cranberry.

"No, he didn't touch me. But I was scared he would, and Julien wasn't there, and the captain wasn't there, and you guys weren't there..." she said, looking at the two of us.

I looked down, shamefaced. The Chief coughed politely and turned away.

Ashley's tears suddenly dried up, and she began to grin, the first time I'd seen her smile in ages. "Wait. Where WERE you guys?" she said. "What were you DOING?" she said, sounding mischievous, her eyes going back and forth between me and the Chief.

We reeked of sex, and the Chief's hair was hanging down past her chest, a look almost nobody on the ship had ever seen, other than at the ceremony after we'd crossed the line. Never in her boiler suit.

It was like a switch had flipped, and suddenly the fear and anger of whatever it was Hogg thought he was going to do was gone, and Ashley was giggling with happiness as she realized the Chief and I had finally fucked after all this time. She knew how hard I'd been crushing on Clarissa.

"I am so happy for you guys," she said, gushing. She threw her arms around me and gave me a big hug, and then she stood up and did the same to the Chief, who awkwardly returned it, laughing.

"You all have to tell me everything!" She gushed.

I looked at the Chief, who shifted awkwardly in her seat.

"Some other time, Ash," I told her, getting up and giving her a quick kiss on the top of her head.

The Chief went back to her cabin, Ashley went to take a shower and try to get sober, and I went back to my cabin, where the exhaustion and excitement of this day -- one of the best of my life -- finally overwhelmed me and I fell into a deep, relaxed, completely satisfied sleep.

* * *

Gulf of Aden

29 April 2025

1300 hours (1:00 PM local)

Thirty-third day of voyage

The longshoremen finished loading the cargo. The Chief made her rounds. Some of the crew slept off their hangovers, others nursed them with coffee and cigarettes, and maybe a few of them even with the hair o' the dog. We all had to deal with the fallout of yesterday's revelries in our own way, and the Cleveland limped out of Salahah right as my watch was ending.

So, of course, my watch got extended for another two hours. Someday I'd be thankful this happened -- overtime is the merchant mariner's best friend -- but I didn't get overtime, so I just had to be thankful for the extra sea time.

I met the Chief for lunch and our afternoon workout. She had a spring in her step, and so did I. Finally getting to sleep with her, after all that time we'd been so close but so far away, was a dream come true.

At the same time, seeing her naked for the first time, seeing the scars from old wounds, the tattoos I didn't understand -- all of it gave me as many questions as answers, and I desperately wanted to get to know her better, but without my curiosity turning into an interrogation.

Porky Pig didn't say a word. None of us actually saw him. He was down in the engine room, stashed away, and he didn't even come out for meals, sending one of the wipers -- not Ashley -- to get food from the galley for him.

Ash, for her part, didn't seem any worse for the experience. I think she learned a lesson, realized what I had told her wasn't because I was a spoilsport, but because I cared about her, and I didn't think she'd make that mistake again. Julien, for some reason, seemed to feel bad that he wasn't there to protect her. I just hoped he realized that this thing they had was probably not going to last longer than this voyage. Maybe. Ash could be mercurial where men were concerned.

That thought made me question my own relationship with the Chief. Was this just a few-month infatuation? Were we going to go our separate ways as soon as my Sea Year was over? What did she want? Hell, what did I want? Could something like this even work? She was twice my age, literally my mother's age. Did anything like this actually end up working long term?

"I can't get yesterday out of my mind," Clarissa told me as we sat together over two bowls of leftover gumbo from yesterday's party.

"I know," I told her. "It was pretty amazing when you took out ole' Porky Pig with one punch to the gut and then put your boot on his neck like you were in the WWE," I said, teasing her.

"That's not what I meant, Mer," she said, a grin tugging at the corners of her mouth. "But that was pretty fucking good, I admit," she said, laughing lightly.

I reached under the table, and her hand met mine. I gave it a squeeze, which she returned, and then we sat for a few minutes in a companionable silence.

Oddly enough, it was she who raised some of the questions I had for her.

She cleared her throat, and from the sound of it, I knew something important was coming. "Listen, Mer..."

I braced myself. This wasn't how good conversations started.

"Yes, Clarissa?" I asked, making a point to use her name and not her title. I looked into her eyes, hoping to divine what she was going to say next.

I never could have guessed it in a million years.

"Mer, I don't know how to say this. Look, I know you're younger than me. And I know there's a lot you don't know about me. And, honestly, I know far more about you than I've let on, okay? I didn't think any of this was going to happen. I didn't think for a minute you'd look so much like her, that you'd act so much like her, that those feelings... that they'd come back so strongly. And then when I got to know you, got to see and talk and listen and spend time with you... I didn't think I'd feel this strongly, okay?" The words just spilled out.

I was confused. I had no idea what she was referring to.

"If this is going to get heavy, we need to get away from all the ears here," I said to her, nodding around at the other crewmembers who were stumbling in to get some grub. I took her half empty bowl of gumbo, added it to my tray, and then took it over to the steward's assistant, who took it from me with a nod of thanks.

"Let's go to the bosun's locker," I suggested.

She nodded. A few minutes later we were sitting in her private sanctuary. She started to reach for the Titos, but I stopped her. "Just coffee, please," I said, laughing. She laughed a bit at herself and poured two cups out of a large thermos she kept for just that purpose, refreshed each morning in the galley.

I looked at her intensely. I had been thinking over what she'd told me in the mess, and I was starting to put two and two together.

"So, how long have you known my mother?" I asked her pointedly.

The air went out of the Chief like I'd punched her the way she'd punched Hogg yesterday.

"Figured it out, did you?" She asked, raising an eyebrow at me.

"Let's start at the beginning," I said. I leaned in closer to her. She hesitated, but didn't pull away. I brushed her lips with mine, and I whispered to her. "It's okay. Nothing you say is going to change how I feel about you. I promise."

And I knew that to be true. I was falling in love with Clarissa Larsen, and unless she revealed something truly heinous, like she killed puppies for sport or she was a New York Yankees fan, there wasn't anything I thought she could say that would really change how I felt about her.

And so, she started from the beginning.

She'd enlisted in the Navy back in 1998. She originally trained as a corpsman, a combat medic. She wanted to fly, wanted to go out on search and rescue missions, and so she'd put in for service in helicopters. She'd been assigned to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 11, also known as the Dragonslayers or just the Slayers, which explained one of her tattoos.

This was where she had met Lieutenant Junior Grade Margaret 'Maggie' Hopper. Or, as I liked to call her, Mom.

Clarissa had a huge crush on Mom, but this was the era of "Don't Ask Don't Tell" so she didn't. They were ever only friends and soon became best friends. But Clarissa had always wished for more.

"Your mom was amazing. She was funny, and cute and sexy, and I can't tell you how many times I tried to convince her to give me a chance," Clarissa said, her eyes crinkling in a smile at the memory. "But she'd always tell me the same thing -- 'don't shit where you eat.'"

I laughed out loud when she said that. That had always been Daddy's phrase to me. I had no idea he'd gotten it from Mom.

After 9/11, HSC-11 was assigned to Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, where she and Mom served two tours, and later to Operation Iraqi Freedom, for another two tours, and then a final two in Afghanistan again. Mom flew the Seahawk, one of the Navy's most advanced combat helicopters, and the Chief was part of her crew.

They were supposed to be focused on search and rescue, flying non-combat missions because Mom was female, but she was a good pilot and Clarissa was a good corpsman, and there were times when they'd get tasked with certain missions that Clarissa told me she couldn't really talk about. Just that they included "Naval Special Warfare Support."

On one of those missions, they had gone in to extract a group of Navy SEALs who had been pinned down by Taliban forces. It was supposed to be a non-combat extract, but the landing zone was hot when they got there. There were SEALs down, taking fire from the Taliban. Mom made the decision to set down. Clarissa braved enemy fire, hauled all the wounded SEALs aboard. She even used the.50 cal on the helicopter to return fire.

She'd earned her Bronze Star with Combat V for that fight.

"We didn't fly a lot of missions like that, but there were a few. We had been lucky that time -- the Taliban couldn't shoot for shit, and they only clipped the chopper a few times," she said. We'd finished our first cups of coffee and were on our second. I was enraptured. Listening to her explain all of this, matter-of-factly, like it was nothing, was amazing to me.

"What about those scars?" I asked. She tapped lips with her finger for a few seconds, and I could see her eyes take on a bit of a ghostly look, like she was seeing something in her mind's eye. She shuddered.

"That was in Iraq," she said.

It was a similar situation, except this time, it was a sea rescue. One of our fighter jets had gone down in an accident off the coast of Iraq. This was in 2004. Mom was a Lieutenant at this point, with dozens of missions under her belt, and Clarissa was a Petty Officer First Class.

They went out in search of the pilots, found them bobbing up and down in the water off Umm Qasr. Clarissa was deploying down from the chopper to hook them up and bring them aboard, when they came under fire from two skiffs filled with pissed off Iraqi rebels, who were hoping to take the pilots captive and hold them for ransom.

Clarissa didn't see them coming. They shot her in the shoulder and in the thigh, and the pilot and the radio intercept officer from the downed F-14 -- one of the last still in operational service, as they were being phased out that year -- were both wounded as well. Despite being wounded, Clarissa stayed with the pilots, got them clear of the water and treated their wounds, before she passed out from loss of blood.

Mom got her back to base in time to save her life, and Clarissa's quick actions had saved the two airmen's lives. She got the Silver Star for that, along with the Purple Heart.

Mom got promoted, Clarissa got a long stint in the hospital recovering. Mom met Dad at a naval conference in Europe. They fell in love and got married. Clarissa was Mom's maid of honor.

"I was jealous of your dad," she told me. "He came out of nowhere, the sexy Danish sea captain, and swept her off her feet. Snorri Madsen was so much like me it was nuts. So much that I couldn't stand him sometimes, and we constantly butted heads. But, in the end, the real issue was that she loved him and not me, and God... that hurt," she said.

She looked down at the deck, then back up at me. "Then you were born, and I knew I'd lost her for good," she told me. She lifted up the stack of paper that had apparently sat on her desk since the line-crossing ceremony and picked up the framed photo she'd covered up. She handed it to me. Looking at it closely, I could see a young Clarissa with her arm around my mother.

I felt a pang of sadness. "Why? You were best friends?"

"We were growing apart. She had your father, and then she had you. I tried to make the best of it. I remember seeing you just after you were born. I brought a gift," she said, and her eyes got misty. "I had gotten drunk on shore leave with your mom, and we'd ended up in a tattoo parlor in Norfolk. She got a tattoo of a starfish on her calf, and I got a shark on my... well, you've seen it," she said, blushing. "I was at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, and I saw these stuffed sharks in the gift shop. They reminded me of that tattoo and that night, and so I bought him for you."

I was stunned. Clarissa had given me Sharky?

"Wait, really?" I stammered. My eyes filled with tears.

"Yep. Put him in your crib the first time I met you," she said. "You hugged him right away."

I laughed, and I cried, and so did she. "How do I not remember you at all?"

"It wasn't long after that when your mother got promoted to Lieutenant Commander and was posted to Pentagon duty. She was on the fast track for command. Everybody loved her. Maggie Madsen was a sailor's sailor, and we all thought she'd be the first female Chief of Naval Operations someday. She won't be the first, but she could still get the job, maybe," she told me. "We grew apart. I stayed in choppers, ended up serving on the Enterprise and later on the Stennis. Made Chief, then Senior Chief, and finally Master Chief. I was one of the youngest Master Chiefs in the Navy, but I was growing tired of it."

She loved the life, but being female and a Master Chief was hard on Clarissa. While the Navy had changed with the times, and her experience in combat and her decorations helped keep the claims of preferential treatment because of her gender away from her, they never made them really go away. She finished her twenty years and got out.

But she'd spent most of her life either at sea or in the air, and she didn't think she could go off and be a nurse somewhere, so she joined the Merchant Marine. She'd worked her way up through the deck department and had been a bosun for a few years now.

"I haven't seen or heard from your mom in a decade, Mer," she told me. "I have always regretted not keeping in touch with her or getting to watch you grow up."

"Did you know I was going to be on this ship? That I was going to King's Point?"

"I had no idea. Not until I saw the crew roster, and your name. I wondered if it was actually you, or just a weird coincidence. But that all flew out of my head the first time I saw you. You look just like your mother did at your age. And, well... those old feelings came flooding back," she told me. "I should have told you before."

"Clarissa..." I said, looking at her fondly. "Please, don't. I went out of my way to hide who my parents were from the rest of the crew. I didn't want anybody to know. Still don't. You didn't need to announce to me you were my mom's long lost best friend who gave me my favorite stuffed animal and had an unrequited love affair with her, okay?"

She snapped out a laugh, which sounded good to my ears. "Good point," she told me, ruefully. "But I don't want you to think that I like you just because you remind me of Maggie. I like you because you're you. I like the woman you've become and let me be honest -- you are way hotter than your mom ever was," she said, laughingly. "Your mother would never have gotten her nipples pierced or been willing to fuck an older woman. She was kind of a prude, honestly."

"Oh God, please don't put those images into my head," I laughed with her. "And 'don't shit where you eat' may have been some of the worst advice she'd ever given Daddy, and he gave to me. If I'd have listened to them, I'd never have done anything with you. I'd never have crossed that line."

"And we'd both be worse off for it," she said. I stood up and pulled her to her feet. I reached out and wrapped her in a big hug. She felt good, and I knew she felt better having gotten all of that off her chest.

None of it resolved any of my questions about our future together, but I had never felt closer to Clarissa than I did right now. Knowing her background, knowing her relationship with Mom and Dad... it made me want to be with her even more. I didn't care about how old she was, or her crush on Mom. I cared about how she made me feel.

She made me feel good. Safe. Cared for. And that's what mattered to me.

I pulled back from the hug, and I leaned up and in, and soon we were kissing.

Her lips felt amazing, as they always did, and I felt my pussy begin to moisten. She melted into me, and I wrapped my arms around her again, our tongues touching and probing, as I tried to convey all the emotions she brought out in me through that kiss.

Then the alarms began to sound.

At first, I thought I was just imagining things, but the alarms didn't stop, and soon we heard a loud explosion -- it wasn't so loud that it was near the ship, but loud enough that it got our attention. It happened maybe ten seconds after we heard the alarms.

"What the fuck?" the Chief said, and she turned and grabbed the M4 she'd used to kill the suicide bomber from a crate on the deck beside her desk.

"All hands to your muster stations, this is not a drill, we are under attack. All hands to your muster stations," Captain Combover's voice blared out of the speakers along the deck.

Clarissa and I raced up the companionway and made our way to the bridge.

Captain Lawrence was there, along with AB Johnson at the helm. Mugridge was on the starboard bridge wing, staring out to starboard, the big ship's binoculars around his chest.

"I can definitely see a ship out there, sir," he said, calling to the captain. "It's dark green, looks like a RO/RO... a car carrier, sir!"

Captain Lawrence flipped through a black binder on the rack behind the radar and then punched a number into the ship's phone.

"NAVCENT Battlewatch/Emergency, identify yourself," the voice came out of the speaker.

"This is the Cleveland, we are one day out of Salahah en route to Jebel Ali. We have DOD cargo aboard. We are being attacked by drones, and there's a large car carrier to our starboard, ten miles distant that we believe may be the Galaxy Leader. We need your help, NAVCENT!"

"Stand by, Cleveland" the disembodied voice said.

"Sir! Another drone sir! It's headed this way!" Captain Combover shouted, pointing.

We couldn't see anything. Clarissa ran out onto the bridge wing and sighted down the scope of her M4.

"I see it, sir," she said. "Do I have permission to engage?"

"Chief, this isn't the fucking Navy -- just shoot the goddamn thing, okay?" Mugridge said, his voice tinged with hysteria.

I didn't know what to do. Pirates was one thing, but this was the Houthis themselves, with a ship designed to launch these drones. What could we do? We were one container ship, with one crewperson with one rifle. That's it. How were we supposed to fight off the Galaxy Leader? The whole fucking Navy had been looking for this ship, and here it was ten miles from us, launching drones, one of which had already exploded -- probably by accident -- before it got to us.

"What the fuck is happening?" a loud voice said. One of the bridge doors banged open, and Chief Engineer Hogg barged in, followed by Ashley Hinton. "What the fuck was that explosion?"

"We're under attack, Chief Hogg," I told him. "The Galaxy Leader. She's ten miles to starboard, and she's launched drones at us. One of them exploded before it got here, and there's another one inbound."

"Mother of God," he said, going pale. "I didn't sign up for this. None of us signed up for this, Lawrence!"

The captain ignored him, and the speaker on the bridge burst with static.

"Cleveland? This is Captain Gillooly, the NAVCENT watch officer. Can you confirm your position please," he asked.

Captain Lawrence did so, reading off our longitude and latitude. "Captain, we need Navy support. We're under attack!"

"Copy, Cleveland. I'm patching you through to the nearest asset we have available. Stand by."

Lawrence mashed the mute button and then let out of string of curses that made me blush. He ended with "I've been fucking standing by, Captain! Hurry the fuck up!"

He unmuted the phone. "Please hurry, Captain."

At that moment, Clarissa opened fire. The sound of small arms fire filled the bridge.

It should have been clearly audible to the Navy Captain on the phone.

"It's too fast, Captain!" Clarissa shouted. "It's too small, and I don't have enough ammo -- I used most of it on the pirates!"

We could hear the whine of the drone's engines, low and getting steadily louder as it approached the ship.

"Get out of there! Get back on the bridge!" Lawrence shouted, and Captain Combover, Clarissa and the ordinary seamen who were the lookouts clambered back onto the bridge, the door slamming shut behind them. Through the windows on the starboard side, I could just make out a small black dot that was slowly getting larger.

The speakers crackled with static again. "Cleveland, this is Commander Dan Crone, of the Carl Vinson. What's your status?"

I saw Clarissa's head snap up, away from the drone, towards the telephone. I thought I saw a look of recognition in her eyes. The Vinson... that was Mom's flagship!

"Commander, we are under attack from an unknown assailant, but we believe her to be the Galaxy Leader. She has launched two drones at us. One failed three miles from the ship and exploded harmlessly, but one is now five miles out and closing fast. The ship we believe is the Galaxy Leader is now at... nine miles, bearing 090 from us, and closing," Captain Lawrence said, looking down at the radar plot. "We need your help, Commander!" Captain Lawrence was as calm as he could be, all things considered.

"Copy, Cleveland. We are still en route to the Gulf of Aden. Can you confirm the Galaxy Leader is chasing you? Turn to two-seven-zero and make best speed away from them," the Commander said.

"I can't be sure, Commander, but what other car carrier would be launching explosive drones at us? And she's almost as fast as we are, Commander. I don't think we can outrun her," the captain said, rubbing his face with his hand. "And we definitely can't outrun those drones!"

"I understand, Captain. We can launch a strike right now on the Galaxy Leader but we must have positive visual confirmation. We can't risk shooting an unarmed commercial ship. It will take a little time to verify that vessel's identity," the Commander said. "We'll do that now, but again, I advise you to turn to two seven zero and make best speed back to Salahah."

Captain Lawrence gave the order, and Johnson obediently turned the ship to port, steading up due west. He pushed the engine telegraph to flank.

"This is bullshit. Fucking Navy doesn't give a shit about us," Hogg growled.

"Cleveland, this channel is still open," the Commander's voice said, an edge to it.

"Good -- then you can listen as we all get fucking killed, you asshole!" Hogg yelled.

"That's enough, Hogg!" Lawrence yelled.

Hogg was freaking out. He was pacing back and forth, and he was extremely agitated. I could see beads of sweat breaking out on his forehead, and he was rubbing and squeezing his hands together. He should have been down in the engine room, but he must have been close to the bridge and decided to come up here instead of down there. Fortunately, the First Assistant was competent and could handle making sure the engine was giving us max RPMs.

I saw Clarissa look at me, and then back at the captain. She rushed over to him and whispered something in his ear.

"What? Seriously?" he said, and he turned to look at me. I had a feeling I knew what she told him. "Well, try it!"

Clarissa came over and stood near the speakerphone. "Commander Crone! This is Master Chief Petty Officer Clarissa Larsen," she said. "I can't believe they gave you another fucking stripe, Dan! What is this world coming to?"

"Chief Larsen? Is that really you? What the hell are you doing on a commercial ship?" Crone said, his voice taking on a completely different tone.

"I've been on the Cleveland for a year now," she told him. "But we don't have time to stroll down memory lane. I need a favor," she said. "I need you to get the Admiral on the horn."

"Chief, I don't think I can do that--" he started to say.

"Dan! Listen, you don't get it. Tell her Meredith is on this ship. Tell her now!"

"Wait one," the voice said.

"Sir!" Johnson shouted. "The drone!"

We had been so focused on the conversation between the Chief and the Vinson that we'd forgotten about the drone. It was coming straight towards the ship, hurtling along, less than a mile away. The noise was loud.

We watched as it got closer and closer, approaching the ship from starboard.

"Everybody get down! NOW!" the captain yelled, and we all ducked behind whatever metal we could find. Clarissa threw her body over mine, and I saw the captain get behind his chair. Hogg ran to the opposite side of the bridge and tried to duck behind some equipment. Johnson and the two ordinaries ran to hide behind the binnacle.

When the drone got to within fifty yards, it exploded.

The concussion sent shards of glass from the bridge windows arcing through the air. Thank God we had all taken cover, or the glass would have cut half of us to pieces. As it was, I saw Johnson get hit with a large piece that sliced open his arm, leaving a bright crimson ribbon of blood across it, and one of the ordinary seamen took a shard to the leg.

"Vinson! We're hit! We've taken a drone strike! We need immediate assistance now!" Captain Lawrence shouted.

We all stood up and looked at the radar. The blip that was the Galaxy Leader was directly behind us. She was trying to match our speed, but we were just slightly faster. It was only a matter of time before she launched another flight of drones.

"Cleveland, this is Rear Admiral Madsen, commander of Carrier Strike Group One. Do you copy?"

Mom's voice sounded loud and clear through the bridge speaker. The explosion hadn't done much more than spangle the side of the ship with shrapnel and blew out most of the windows on the starboard side of the house, including those on the bridge.

The Chief and Ashley had raced to the bridge first aid kit and were dressing Johnson and the OS's wounds.

"We copy, Admiral," Captain Lawrence said. "Did you catch our last transmission?"

"Yes, captain, I understand you are under attack. Damage report? Casualties?"

"The windows on the bridge are gone, and we've got cuts on two of my mariners on the bridge. Waiting on reports from the rest of the ship about damage, but we're still underway. We believe Galaxy Leader is behind us, matching our speed, still eight miles distant. It's only a matter of time before they attack us again, Admiral."

"Copy, Cleveland. Can you confirm the presence of Midshipman Meredith Madsen on your ship, captain?"

Lawrence looked at me. I cleared my throat. "Admiral, this is Midshipman Madsen. I can confirm I'm on the ship, ma'am."

There was dead air for a few moments. "Are you hurt?"

"No ma'am. I'm here with Clarissa Larsen, Admiral. We sure could use your help," I told her.

"Chief Larsen is on the ship as well? Let me talk to her," Mom said.

The Chief stepped over to the phone. "Admiral, this is Chief Larsen. Good to hear your voice," she added.

There was a pause. "Good to hear yours, Chief. We can't launch an attack without a positive visual confirmation of the Galaxy Leader. I can launch aircraft to do some visual passes, but that's going to take too long. Can you confirm the ship attacking you is the Galaxy Leader?"

The Chief looked at the radar, then went and looked back aft at the ship chasing us. She took the binoculars from Mugridge, and stared long and hard at the ship.

I might have been the only person on the bridge, besides Clarissa, who understood what Mom had actually been saying. Mom wouldn't risk civilian casualties by firing on a vessel that we hadn't positively identified. Nor would she risk her career on the word of some random commercial captain she'd never met. Even my word wouldn't be good enough -- I was too young and inexperienced.

But Admiral Maggie trusted her old bunky, Chief Clarissa, and if the Chief told her it was the Galaxy Leader, then she could take that to the bank, and would act on it.

The Chief came back. "Affirmative, Admiral. I can positively identify the ship attacking us as the Galaxy Leader. She's been repainted, but she's launching drones at us, and she conforms to the last description MARAD provided and her speed is consistent with her powerplant. Unless the Houthis suddenly have another fast RO/RO, that's her."

"Copy Cleveland,," I heard the Admiral say. "Wait one."

She must have forgot to hit the mute button, because we heard her begin to bark orders.

"All ahead flank, radio the rest of the battle group emergency speed! They've found the Galaxy Leader! Launch the alert five aircraft and prepare a Tomahawk strike from the Princeton!"

Mom changed the tone in her voice and spoke to us.

"Cleveland, we're launching aircraft to escort you, and we'll be launching an attack on the Galaxy Leader shortly. You need to get as far away from that ship as you can, understand?"

"Yes, Admiral," the captain said, stepping over towards the phone, his feet crunching the broken glass that covered the deck. "We'll do our best."

"We'll keep this channel open. Commander Crone will be your liaison. Stay safe, Cleveland, help is on the way," she told us. "Madsen out."

"Sweep this deck, get this glass up!" Mugridge barked, and the uninjured ordinary seaman jumped up and flew off the bridge, coming back a few moments later with a bucket and a broom, and he began to sweep up the broken glass.

In all of the excitement, I'd forgotten that Chief Hogg was still on the bridge. I turned to look at him. He was standing over one of the electronic chart tables, bracing himself with both hands. He looked completely pale, and sweat was pouring off him.

"Chief Hogg, are you okay?" I asked, taking a step towards him. He looked at me, started to sneer, and then collapsed onto the deck.

"Chief! Hogg is down!"

Clarissa ran over to him and rolled him over. She patted him down, looking for wounds, but finding nothing. She leaned over and felt his pulse.

"He's having a fucking heart attack," she growled. "Madsen! Get the defibrillator! Hinton! We need to do CPR! His heart's stopped! Get over here!"

All of us had CPR training. Johnson was injured, as was the other OS, and the one cleaning the glass had left the bridge. The captain and the first officer were handling the ship, so it fell to us, the three women on the Cleveland, to save Boss Hogg's life.

I went searching for the bridge AED, the automated external defibrillator. While I was doing that, the Chief unzipped Hogg's boiler suit and began the thirty chest compressions, while Ashley was getting ready to give him the two rescue breaths. As soon as the Chief hit thirty compressions, Ashley pinched Hogg's nose shut, opened his mouth and blew into it. His chest rose and fell once, then twice.

The Chief checked his pulse after the first thirty compressions. "I feel something, but it's weak! Get the AED over here, Mer!"

I finally found it, buried under a pile of paper. I tore it out and brought it over. The Chief knew what she was doing and soon had the AED pads applied to his chest. She turned the unit on, followed the voice prompts and then shouted at all of us to stay clear.

We all backed away, and the AED's voice prompt told her to hit the shock button, which she did. Hogg's chest bounced up, clear off the deck, and fell back down. He coughed once, twice, and then started breathing on his own.

"He's got a pulse!"

"Mugridge, get on the horn to Salahah and tell them we have a medical emergency!"

The first mate had been beside himself, watching as his best friend was being worked on by the three people Hogg hated most on the ship. He simply nodded, and got on another line, letting Salahah know we needed emergency services.

We were hours out from Salahah, and we had to pray that Hogg was out of the immediate crisis. But we were all still in danger, because the Galaxy Leader was still behind us, chasing.

And she'd started to gain, slowly. How?

"Bridge, engineering, what's going on down there? Why are we slowing down?!" Captain Lawrence barked into his walkie talkie, which connected him to the engine room.

"Engineering, bridge -- we're overtaxing the engines! We've got to reduce RPMs or we're going to lose propulsion!"

"We are being chased by a fucking Houthi drone carrier! We need as much speed as you can give us!" Lawrence shouted.

"We can do twenty knots, captain, maybe twenty-one but any more than that and we're at risk of losing the whole plant!"

"Understood. Just don't let it drop any lower than that, or we're all dead!"

I looked up at the speed indicator on the bridge monitor, and saw it tick down slowly from twenty-five knots to twenty-one knots, where it held steady.

We were all staring at the radar, and we saw the Galaxy Leader slowly start to claw up the distance, yards at a time.

Hogg was stabilized, and the Chief and Ashley were monitoring him, as the stern chase continued. It felt like a long time, but it was probably only half an hour.

"Vinson, what's the ETA on our help?" Lawrence asked.

"Strike is in-bound, Cleveland. Air cover will reach you in five minutes," Commander Crone responded.

Lawrence swore. "What do we do if they launch more drones?"

"Same thing you did last time -- duck. Once we destroy the ship, the drones should fall away harmlessly," Crone said.

Lawrence stabbed the mute button. "I really don't like your fucking friends, Chief," he said. Clarissa grimaced at him.

"Crone was always kind of a dick," she said. "He was a snot nosed Lieutenant when I served with him back on the Stennis," she added. "Always had a chip on his shoulder."

"Well, let's hope Midshipman Madsen's mother comes through," Lawrence said, looking at me archly. "Any more surprises I should know about? Your father a Marine Corps General or some kind of--" Lawrence stopped in mid-sentence. "Wait. Madsen. Your father. Is he Captain Snorri Madsen? Of the Madrid?"

I sighed. I guess all my secrets were coming out. "Yes, sir, he is."

Lawrence grinned at me. "I KNEW I heard your name somewhere. I know your father, Midshipman. He's a damn fine man, and a damn fine captain. And he's raised a damn fine sailor," he said to me.

I thought I'd be embarrassed. That I would hate the crew knowing who my parents were. But to hear Captain Lawrence praise Daddy and me -- and not just for me being his daughter... well... it felt pretty good, not gonna lie.

I had saved the ship from the tanker and had been on the bridge when we'd fought off the suicide bomber. Nobody could tell me that I didn't belong here, that I got my post because of nepotism. Nepotism hadn't given me the courage to give the order that saved the ship. I did that on my own.

I realized I honestly didn't care if the rest of the crew knew who I was now. But none of them seemed to give a shit. They didn't care I was some Admiral's daughter or that my dad sailed for the same company. They cared that I had helped them -- I'd saved the ship from the tanker, we'd helped save Boss Hogg's life. I was their shipmate, not somebody's kid.

The radar suddenly burst alive with a cloud of drones launching from the Galaxy Leader. One, two, more, I counted. There must have been a dozen, and they were all headed straight for us.

"Commander! We have multiple inbound drones!" the captain relayed to Crone.

"Copy. Our missile strike is imminent, Cleveland and our aircraft should be over you shortly," Crone confirmed.

"Let's hope those drones don't get here first!" Lawrence yelled.

Mugridge moved over to the port side bridge wing and tore open the door. He headed outside and raised his binoculars towards the stern, where the Galaxy Leader was right there on our ass, maybe slightly closer than before, but still miles away. There were close to two dozen black dots in the air, getting closer and closer to us.

I followed Mugridge out onto the bridge wing. Clarissa shouted after me to come back, but I wanted to watch. I know it was stupid, but I felt compelled to be out there, to see what was going to happen.

The sound started low, but it was clearly jet engines, and we could soon see two dots winking in the sky far off behind the ship, on the same track as us and the drones.

"C'mon, c'mon, c'mon," Mugridge said, repeating the words under his breath, as he kept his binoculars on the Galaxy Leader and the drones that were rapidly approaching us.

Everything seemed to happen at once.

If I'd blinked, I would have missed it. An absurdly fast-moving blip slammed into the side of the Galaxy Leader. She erupted in smoke and flame belched from her sides, as the ship began to turn to starboard. A massive boom shook our ship, temporarily drowning out the cheer that went up from the Cleveland, and I looked down to see half the crew milling about the deck and below us. We were all staring back at the Galaxy Leader as she spun away from us. When she was on her beam ends toward us, we could see a gaping hole in her side from the Tomahawk impact, and she began listing heavily to port.

It was like somebody had turned off the power to the drones. All two dozen of them suddenly began to lurch and wobble, and then they all dropped sharply into the sea. Not one of them exploded when they hit the water, all of them making large white splashes that reminded me of a fat kid doing cannonballs in the pool back at home.

The closest one had been maybe two hundred yards from the ship.

"Holy shit," the captain said, from behind me.

Above us, the two jets of the Vinson flew on, getting lower and lower, resolving into the unmistakable shape of the F-35 Lightning II. They flew in formation, low enough for us to see them clearly, and the lead F-35 waggled its wings at us, before they rose sharply and began hovering in a racetrack pattern above us that tracked with our current course to Salahah.

The Galaxy Leader was in rough shape, sinking fast, and we were now pulling away from her steadily. We could just make out the port of Salahah straight ahead of us.

I stepped back onto the bridge, along with the captain, and heard Clarissa speaking to Commander Crone of the Vinson.

"The strike was a success, Dan! The Galaxy Leader is sinking, and all the drones are down. We're going to be okay!" she said. "At least, I think we're going to be okay."

"Any more casualties?"

"Our Chief Engineer had a heart attack, but the two midshipmen and I stabilized him," she informed him. "We've radioed ahead for medical assistance from Salahah," she noted.

I felt a wave of relief crest over me. We'd done it. Mom had saved the day. We'd saved Boss Hogg's life, and I couldn't wait to see the look on his face when he had to acknowledge that he owed his life to the three women he'd derided as "cunts" and said had no place on the ship or in the merchant marine at all. I knew he should have laid off all those fucking burgers.

Clarissa turned and smiled at me, and I crossed the few feet between us and pulled her into a fervent embrace and a deep kiss. I didn't give a shit who saw us. I didn't care who knew we were together.

We were alive. We'd been through more on this one trip than anybody had any right to go through. And I wanted to celebrate that with the woman I loved.

So, I did.

She returned the kiss, and I closed my eyes, and let the rest of the world fall away, until it was just me and Clarissa Larsen.

* * *

Jebel Ali, United Arab Emirates

3 May 2025

2100 hours (9:00 PM local)

Final day of voyage

After we got back to Salahah, Boss Hogg was taken off the ship by paramedics and sent to the local hospital. They performed emergency heart bypass surgery. He'd be stuck in Oman for another couple of months before he'd be well enough to fly home to the States.

The first faces he saw when he got out of surgery were me, Ashley and the Chief's.

He actually had the good grace to look abashed. "I'm sorry," he croaked, looking at the three of us. "I should never have pissed in the bilges," he said. Of course, fucking Porky Pig couldn't apologize for being a misogynist or for hating women in the Merchant Marine. Pissing in the bilges was apparently the most he could acknowledge he'd done wrong.

We all laughed, and even he cracked a smile. "If you hadn't been there, I'd be a dead man. I can't believe you did this for me. You all hated me..."

"Still do," the Chief said, looking at him, with a half grin.

"... but you still saved my life. Thanks," he said. That was about all he had the strength for. We left him there and headed back to the ship.

After a few minor repairs, we were back underway, headed to Jebel Ali to discharge our cargo, load up with empty containers and head back the way we'd come, all the way back around the Cape and home to Norfolk.

We got our first taste of shore leave in Jebel Ali, and the Chief, Ashley, Julien and I took in the sights, such as they were. Let's be honest -- they were all bars.

We drank and ate and drank some more, and by the time we stumbled back to the ship, not one of us could stand without swaying.

I ended up in the Chief's stateroom, which was about the same size as mine. We tore each other's clothes off and went to town.

We kissed, we fondled, our bodies writhing together in her bunk. I couldn't get enough of her boobs, her stomach, her ass, and she couldn't get enough of me, either.

The four of us had stumbled into a tattoo shop, and we all came out with tattoos that read "Cleveland rocks!" in fancy calligraphy on our right forearms, with an anchor on each side.

The final day in port, Clarissa and I rented a hotel room for a few hours and managed to make love on a bed that was larger than a twin for the first time since we'd been together.

We only had the room for a few hours, but we tore that place apart, and each other. Clarissa had managed to find a sex shop somewhere in this Muslim country, and bought a strap on dildo, amongst a few other toys.

I'll never forget the feeling of riding her, our tongues dancing together, her hands on my boobs, that rubber cock in my pussy, her green eyes flashing at me while we fucked each other over and over, until we could barely walk. It was pure passion, pure hedonism, and I loved every minute of it.

Now we were back together on the ship, in my cabin, naked, my head resting on the twin pillows of her breasts.

"I have a problem, Chief," I said, as I cuddled up close to her, our naked bodies pressed together tightly.

"And what's that, Midshipman?" She asked me, playfully tapping my nose with her finger.

"I think I'm in love," I said, softly.

She grinned at me. "Oh you do, do you?" Then she raised her eyebrow at me. "Anybody I know?"

I laughed and kissed her. As we broke our kiss, she stroked my forearm, where the Cleveland tattoo was still red and raw, just starting to scab over and heal.

"I also have a problem," she said. "I think I'm in love, too."

I looked at her and smiled. "What the hell are we going to do?"

"That's the wrong question, Mer," the Chief said, laughing.

"So, what's the right question?" I asked her, kissing the tips of her fingers.

"The right question is, 'What the hell are we going to tell your mother?'" she said.

I barked out a laugh.

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it. In the meantime, we've got another trip to make," I said. "You think you can handle another few months of me?"

Clarissa reached over and tweaked one of my piercings and then leaned in for a kiss.

"Can't wait."

THE END