On 13 December 2001, Nick Brownlow, "stabernide" <stabernide@...>
said:

The MiB instructed:
><<I'd also like to see some possible action from players with active
>characters>>
>
>Just trying to get back into character...
>
>***

Even more difficult for me to do so, joining the investigation in
midstream, as it were...

The following is predicated on ZIMMERMAN's statement ("ZIMMERMAN's
Agenda") on the morning of 9 December 99, at the staff meeting following
various ops including Porter's and Nakasone's 8 December survey in Kaneohe
Bay in the police motorboat.

"I'm going to ask a Coast Guard Friendly to take Porter and Nakasone on
a more widespread oceanographic survey..." said ZIMMERMAN, in part, and my
character, CDR Ida Midgett, is said "Coast Guard Friendly".

We can assume the request came down from ZIMMERMAN later on the 9th,
through channels that would be usual and unsuspiscious for Ida. (That means
no data embedded in pornography -- perhaps something in one of her C.S.
Forester, Patrick O'Brien, or historical lists? The exact mechanics are
probably unimportant -- the important thing is that she got it!)

It was probably soon followed by official orders from 14th CG District,
with phrases like "environmental survey", "reports of suspiscious
environmental contamination", "multi-agency investigation", and "extending
every assistance short of endangering your ship and your crew"... All the
usual stuff when something too big not to leave a paper trail is covered up
by a paper trail for a normal type of operation! (The officer who actually
cut the orders probably believed every bit of what he or she was told about
it being a normal survey operation, and cooperation with other law
enforcement agencies...)

This leaves a bit under a day to recall the crewmembers on leave, top
off fuel and supplies, load the survey equipment, and so on. Sounds like a
lot of time, but a Coast Guard cutter is not an automobile.

I figured, in the installment below, on a projected departure time from
Sand Island of 0930 local time, 10 December, with three hours at twelve
knots bringing them into Kaneohe Bay around 1230.

Here are a couple of establishing shots of the cutter at the pier at
Honolulu Harbor, tied up starboard side to pier, awaiting the arrival of
Porter and Nakasone:

http://holoholo.org/hps/dhbeacon/dhb9905sx.jpg
http://holoholo.org/hps/dhbeacon/dhb9905tz.jpg

You can consult the Coast Guard's "Juniper class" site
(http://www.uscg.mil/hq/g-a/awl/bclass/wlb_a/junaclass.htm) for the
inevitable tech details, and a slide show of the sets -- er, the various
parts of the cutter!

And now on with our story...

(A slightly different version of this was sent off earlier in the week to
the MiB, but I thought it still needed work, hence the version below...):)




Spiral Chalice: "You've Got to Go Out..."


"A ship was stranded off Cape Hatteras on the Diamond Shoals and
one of the life saving crew reported the fact that this ship had
run ashore on the dangerous shoals. The old skipper gave the
command to man the lifeboat and one of the men shouted out that
we might make it out to the wreck but we would never make it
back. The old skipper looked around and said, '_The Blue Book
says we've got to go out and it doesn't say a damn thing about
having to come back._'"

-- recounted by Chief Boatswain's Mate Clarence P. Brady, USCG (Ret.),
Coast Guard Magazine, March, 1954


10 December 1999
USCGC "Kukui" (WLB-203)
USCG Base
Sand Island
Honolulu, HI


"Captain on the bridge!" announced Kowalski.

Just after eight bells, at 0807 hours, Commander Ida Midgett stepped onto
the bridge of the "Kukui".

She gave the people present a reasonably cheery "Good Morning!", noting
that they seemed relatively rested for today's departure. Being covered, she
returned Mr. Aubrey's salute, following it up with a smile and a nod that
meant "As you were!"

Ida had gotten just over six hours of sleep last night - a little more than
she had really thought she should, after receipt yesterday of the message
from ZIMMERMAN, and the official paperwork from 14th Coast Guard District, a
little later on in the same day.

Lieutenant Aubrey, her Executive Officer, had gently but firmly suggested
(as firmly as an XO could to his Captain) that she "get a little rest", that
everything was proceeding on schedule for a departure on the morning of the
10th. Still in her Service Dress Whites from the errands ashore yesterday,
she had left the usual standing orders to call her in case of problems. ("If
you find yourself wondering whether to call me," she had reminded the OOD,
"then do so...")

In her cabin, down on 03 Level of the superstructure, just under the
bridge, Ida had simply kicked off her pumps (a bit impractical for shipboard
wear, anyway) and hung her white jacket, with its new three-stripe shoulder
boards, in the closet. (She could have simply draped it over a chair, but
neatness had been drilled into her during four years at the Academy...) She
had meant to just rest for a few moments on the bunk, but had dozed off,
still mostly clothed. She must have needed the rest more than she had
thought!

She had had a version of _That Dream_ again last night... After almost
twenty years, Ida experienced it far less than she formerly had, but it
hadn't completely gone away. She doubted if it ever would. The incident had
left its mark on her, as such things tend to do to those who survive them.
Not all scars are physical.

At 20:20 hours, the night of January 28th, 1980, Coast Guard Cadet 2nd
Class Ida Midgett had been a trainee aboard the cutter "Blackthorn" in Tampa
Bay, near the Sunshine Skyway Bridge. She had been off-duty, studying a
marine biology textbook in the wardroom, when disaster struck.

Through a combination of visibility problems and human error, the
cutter had collided nearly head-on with the commercial tanker "Capricorn".
Damage had seemed moderate but survivable - except that the tanker's anchor,
ready for letting go, had become embedded in the side of the Coast Guard
buoy tender. When the chain drew taut, the relentless momentum of the larger
ship caused the anchor to gut the cutter, and capsize her.

Twenty-three out of fifty aboard had died that night. Luckily, the
water was relatively warm, it was a moonlit night, and the tanker sent off a
distress message - otherwise, the loss of life would have been higher. When
Ida was fished from the bay, she was suffering from mild hypothermia, and
had a left leg broken in two places. She had saved three lives that night,
including the life of one injured man to whom, disregarding her own
injuries, she had given her life jacket.

The Coast Guard had given Ida its highest lifesaving award. And, since
then, every now and then, in her dreams, she relived the wreck of the
"Blackthorn"... heard all over again the sound of diesels backing down hard,
and the multiple rapid blasts of the cutter's horn - a doomed ship _in
extremis_, screaming into the moonlit Florida night. At the memorial in
Tampa, she didn't need to look down at the bronze plaque to recite the names
of the dead.

Last night, in her dream, a black-clad stranger - his expression
unreadable behind dark Ray-Bans -- had appeared in the dream-wardroom, and
briefly berated her for holding onto what survivor's guilt she still
maintained after nearly two decades... As if that was something she could
pack up and leave on the pier when the ship set sail in the morning!

Odd how the dream, and the intruder in it, seemed to stay with her this
morning, as she talked to her XO and to Chief Kekoa.

Things had been a little rushed, yesterday, with the recall going out
to the men and women on leave... supplies being loaded... the paperwork
involved in loading that environmental survey equipment...

She hoped the folks who were being sent for this (ahem) "multi-agency
investigation" found it adequate for checking out possible HAZMAT
contamination in Kaneohe Bay. Nansen bottles, a core sampler, a fine-mesh
trawl, some dip nets, portable analysis equipment... "Kukui" was a buoy
tender, not a dedicated oceanographic vessel! There was some protective gear
- no Chemturion suits or the like, though...

They were even equipped for diving, if it came to that - besides Ida's
personal diving gear, which she had transferred aboard, the ship carried two
SCUBA sets, for underwater inspection of buoys. She wouldn't permit them to
dive in contaminated water, of course...

And she'd made sure "Kukui" had the standard ordnance loadout, for
the two fifties and the 25mm, as well as for the small-arms. Nobody even
commented on that sort of thing any more. She was known to have this "quirk"
about target practice, and the doubters had stopped laughing after the
shoot-out with that ship full of arms smugglers... Ida hoped that the only
use of that ammo on this cruise would be for her infamous target practice,
but she somehow doubted it.

That was one thing that, in her admittedly limited experience, seemed
unfortunately constant about Delta Green - _gunfire_! And, no, she couldn't
try and keep things more peaceful by not packing the ammo; the other side
would be under no such restriction!

Hopefully, the people DG sent would remember this was a _buoy tender_,
not a _gunboat_!

When he had pinned Ida's new Commander's shoulder boards on her Whites,
back on the morning of the 7th, the Rear Admiral commanding the District had
joked about "having to find her a bigger ship now", but she was happy, for
now, with the "Kukui"! She had commanded this ship from the day of
commissioning, had brought her all that distance from the Lakes to Hawaii,
and knew things about her that the builders back in Wisconsin probably
didn't!

Normally, she would have been in working uniform - dark blue
trousers, light blue shirt, dark blue "USCGC Kukui" ballcap, and so on -
even yesterday during the preparations... However, yesterday, Ida had had to
go ashore, and personally attend to a few matters.

The most pressing, of course, had been taking care of the problem
when that moron LCDR Milford in shoreside Supply had delivered _welding_
grade oxygen for Sickbay, where the requisition had been for the purer
_medical_ grade! When he hadn't listened to even Chief Kekoa and Doc Martin,
she had had to personally go ashore, in Service Dress Whites with her
ribbons and the insignia of her new rank, and have a little _talk_ with him.
In some of their previous discussions, he had looked down his nose at her
from the lofty seniority of a date of rank as Lieutenant Commander, two days
before her own advancement. (That hadn't been just her impression of him -
there had been complaints from the Captain of the "Walnut", too, and even
from one of the WMEC skippers!) But one of the beneficial side effects of
her recent promotion had been to reverse their relative seniority.

Ida was very much an operational type, not a politician. She despised
politics with the distaste of a woman who simply wanted to get the job done,
to accomplish the mission with minimum trouble and casualties... But
sometimes you had to speak to these folks in their own language... She had
actually gotten the Supply Officer to admit someone (not him, of course!)
might have made a small mistake... Luckily, he was due for rotation just
after Christmas!

_One of the best presents the ships here at Sand Island can get, in my
not-so-humble opinion!_

Not for the first time, Ida was glad the white uniform was
permanent-press, though she would probably want to take it by a dry-cleaner
after this cruise! She would take time out to change to her regular underway
uniform after going over the preparations for departure.

They were currently scheduled for departure at 0930, but God and
Murphy only knew how much the investigators' party would be delayed, or how
much they might have to hold departure while these people sent for something
they had forgotten... It could be troublesome, working with civilians!

Here on the bridge, as in various other parts of the ship, was the
familiar tempo of the "Kukui" preparing for sea.

She was glad that no major problems had come up overnight. Nothing that
required waking up the Old Lady... Nobody was foolish enough to utter the
dangerous (and infamous) phrase "Everything is under control"! Even in this
modern age, sailors were still a bit superstitious!

That Marine Sciences Tech they had requested from 14th District
still hadn't shown up, and, if necessary, they would simply leave without
him - even with the equipment for the survey of the harbor, he was more a
"nice to have" than a necessity! Some of her own crew could fill in, if
necessary.

Tanks were topped off - they had enough diesel for a much longer
voyage than was currently planned. With a six thousand mile cruising range,
the thirty-six nautical miles to Kaneohe Bay were a short drive around the
block for the ship. Three hours at an average speed of twelve knots...

_A three-hour tour!_ She really hoped that wasn't an omen of
things to come. _My name is not Jonas Grumby, I have no crewman named
Gilligan, and this is not the "Minnow"!_

Provisions were aboard. The ship could remain at sea for up to
three weeks.

The Engineer Officer reported they had fixed those minor problems in
the crane's hydraulic system, and everything was optimal. The bow thruster
had been tested, and the vibration problem was gone.

As Richard Henry Dana had once written, "_A ship is like a lady's
watch - always under repair!_"

The quartermaster had the latest charts for the Oahu area, and the
data on the buoys in the Kaneohe roadstead. Latest weather report indicated
good sailing for this trip. Nothing above Sea State Two.

They had a full set of SORS equipment aboard, though how well the
oil-cleanup gear might do with a toxic chemical spill, no one knew for sure.

The XO and the Chief assured her that crew morale was high, despite
this environmental survey mission being laid on at comparatively short
notice.

_Probably some bureaucrat's or politician's idea_ was the general consensus
of the crew, who, of course, didn't know that Ida's orders had come from
ZIMMERMAN, and from 14th District, after someone - Ida wasn't sure she
wanted to know - had seen that the official orders for the survey came down
through the proper channels! Not even her Captain could simply have a Coast
Guard cutter put to sea on a whim!

Chief Kekoa, who had been with her ever since that strange op in the
"Ida Lewis" on Lake Superior, hoped they wouldn't encounter any more odd
stuff like the "Sumatra Queen" or the gunrunners - something Ida agreed
with, wholeheartedly, though she suspected they wouldn't be that lucky...

Everything was going well, and she should have time to lay back
below to her cabin, shower, shift from Service Dress White to her working
uniform, and even have some breakfast, before these mysterious spooks showed
up.

She was actually at the top of the ladder - what would have been a
flight of metal stairs to a landlubber -- heading below, when the XO's voice
came from the bridge wing: "I think there's our passengers, Cap'n!"

Ida was back on the bridge wing faster than the two-inch heels
should have allowed her to be. Sure enough, a car was pulling up on the
landward end of the pier, by Berth Echo, and identification was obviously
being shown to the pier sentry. It was a blue Taurus.

_You were expecting an Aston Martin, or maybe a 1938 Phantom
Corsair?_

She permitted herself a grin. "They're early! Maybe that's a good
sign!"

_Just as long as they aren't some of these nihilists, who think
everything is futile, and we're all doomed, or a bunch of trigger-happy
shoot-em-all buckaroos.... Oh, please, let them be reasonable people, this
time..._



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