Fleet of the Damned (Sten #4). Allan Cole

      Sten shuddered. While he was competent at mathematics—any officer had to be—equations were hardly something he joyously spent off-duty time splashing around in.

      Sten’s internal timer went off—it was a break for him. Victoria kept on moving at her inexorable pace.

      Sten watched her disappear in the distance and felt very good.

      If there was anyone who was guaranteed to get through this guano called Selection and become a pilot, it had to be Victoria.

      * * * *

      Sten ducked as the wall of water came green over the boat’s bows and smashed against the bridge windows.

      The boat swayed, and Sten’s stomach did handstands. Shut up, body. This is an illusion. Shut up, head, the answer came back. I am going to be sick. The hell with you.

      Sten, puking to the side, had to fight to follow the instructions whispered at him.

      “This is a twenty-meter boat. It is used to procure fish commercially. You are the captain.

      “This boat has been returning to harbor, running just ahead of a storm.

      “The storm has caught your boat.

      “Somewhere ahead of you is the harbor. You must enter that harbor safely to complete the exercise.

      “Your radar will show you the harbor mouth. But it is a failure-prone installation.

      “You also know that the entrance to this harbor crosses what is called a bar—a shallowing of depth.

      During storm times, this bar can prevent any ship entering the harbor.

      “Good luck.”

      Sten had become experienced enough with the testing to instantly look at his radar screen. Ah-hah. There… somewhat to the right… so I must direct this craft… and, just as implicitly promised, the radar set hazed green.

      Sten evaluated the situation—the illusion he was experiencing through the helmet. Unlike the Shavala-experience, in these tests any action Sten took would be “real.” If, for instance, he steered the ship onto the rocks, he would experience a wreck and, probably, since Selection people were sadistic, slow drowning.

      Simple solution. Easy, Sten thought.

      All I have to do is hit the antigrav, and this boat will—

      Wrong. There were only three controls in front of Sten: a large, spoked steering wheel and two handles.

      This was a two-dimensional boat.

      There were gauges, which Sten ignored. They were probably intended to show engine performance, and Sten, having no idea what kind of power train he was using, figured they were, at least at the moment, irrelevant.

      Another wave came in, and the ship pitched sideways. Sten, looking at his choices, threw the right handle all the way forward, the left handle all the way back, and turned the wheel hard to the right.

      The pitching subsided.

      Sten equalized the two handles—I must have two engines, I guess—and held the wheel at midpoint.

      Ahead of him the storm cleared, and Sten could see high rocks with surf booming over them. There was a slight break to the left—the harbor entrance.

      Sten steered for it.

      The rocks grew closer, and crosscurrents tried to spin Sten’s boat.

      Sten sawed at throttles and wheel.

      Very good. He was lined up.

      The rain stopped, and Sten saw, bare meters in front of him, the glisten of earth as a wave washed back.

      Clotting bastards—that’s what a bar was!

      He reversed engines.

      A series of waves swept his boat over the stern. Sten ignored them.

      He got the idea.

      When a wave hits the bar, the water gets deep. All I need to do is wait for a big wave, checking through the rear bridge windows, and then go to full power. Use the wave’s force to get into the harbor.

      It worked like a shot. The huge wave Sten chose heaved the boat clear, into the harbor mouth.

      Sten, triumphant, forgot to allow for side currents, and his boat smashed into the causeway rocks.

      Just as anticipated, not only did his boat sink, Sten had the personal experience of drowning.

      Slowly.

      GRADE: PASSING.

      * * * *

      By now, Sten had learned the names of his fellow candidates.

      The hard sergeant, who Sten had figured would be thrown out immediately, had managed to survive.

      Survive, hell—so far he and Victoria had interchanged positions as Number One and Number Two in the class standings. A specialist in ancient history would not have been surprised, knowing the man’s name—William Bishop the Forty-third.

      Sten, not knowing, was astonished, as were the other candidates, who had dubbed the sergeant “Grunt,” a nickname he accepted cheerfully.

      The furry would-be beer aficionado, whose name was Lotor, was a valued asset. He was the class clown.

      Since normal military relief valves such as drunkenness, passes, and such were forbidden, the candidates tended to get very crazy in the barracks. Lotor had started the water-sack war.

      Sten had been the first victim.

      There had been an innocent knock on his door at midnight. He’d opened the door to get a plas container of water in the face.

      Sten, once he’d figured out who the culprit was, had retaliated by sealing Lotor in his shower with the drain plugged. He’d relented before the water level hit the ceiling.

      Lotor, after drying his fur, had escalated. He had decided that Sten had allies, Sh’aarl’t being one. So he’d tucked the floor fire hose under Sh’aarl’t’s door and turned it on.

      Sh’aarl’t, awakened when her room got half-full, had sensibly opened the door and gone back to sleep.

      Lotor had not considered that making a spider an enemy was a bad thing to do.

      The next night, Sh’aarl’t had spun her web out from her window up a floor to Lotor’s room and gently replaced his pillow with a water bag.

      Lotor, again looking for a new target, went after Grunt. He tied an explosive charge to a huge water bag, rolled it down the corridor, knocked on Bishop’s door, and then scurried.

      Grunt opened his door just as the water bag blew.

      His revenge required filling Lotor’s room with a huge weather balloon filled with water. Bishop, being the combat type he was, didn’t bother to figure out whether Lotor was present when he set the trap. It took most of the barracks staff to free Lotor. At that point, through mutual exhaustion and because no one could come up with a more clever escalation, the watersack war ended.

      The only good effect it produced was the linking of Lotor, Bishop, Sten, and Sh’aarl’t into a vague team.

      * * * *

      The team adopted Victoria as their mascot. She wasn’t sure why but was grateful for the company. The four never explained, but it was just what Sten had felt on the map exercise: One of them had to make it.

      And Victoria was the most likely candidate.

      The five had discussed their options—which all agreed were slim—and also what those IPs really would turn out to be if they were required to wear uniforms instead of the blank coveralls.

      Victoria had the best slander on Ferrari. She said the sloppy man must have been a Warrant-1, who probably blackmailed his commanding officer while stealing every