Chapter 14 #3
There was no answer.
The bay rolled on, dark and indifferent, as Valor struggled upright beneath them, battered but not capsized.
Fly held Than and stared at the water. He couldn’t see twenty yards, rain hammering the bay so hard it erased the surface.
Fly didn’t let the noise take him. “Check in,” he shouted, voice cutting clean through the wind. “Now.”
“Bridge,” came first, breathless but steady. “Here. Tethered.”
“Joss.”
“I’m here,” Joss coughed. “I’m good.”
“Than.”
Than dragged in a breath that rattled. “Here.”
Fly kept one hand locked on the tiller, the other still wrapped in Than’s vest until he felt the weight settle back into balance.
“Than, choose another jack line, get clipped,” he said. “All of you. Low and tight.”
Valor staggered once more beneath them, then steadied, water draining fast through the scuppers. She was hurt but upright. Floating and valiantly answering.
Fly held her into the wind and waited for the bay to decide whether it wanted more.
The rain thickened, the squall swallowing the water in every direction.
Fly released Than and reached for the radio. “Mayday,” he said, clear and unbroken. “Mayday. Mayday. Mayday.”
There was no pause. No breath taken for permission.
“Naval Academy sailing vessel Valor. Navy Twenty-Six. Position just south of the first mark. We have crew overboard.” He glanced once at the water where Mei had vanished, then back to the horizon, already calculating drift. “One missing. Conditions deteriorating. Request immediate assistance.”
Hollis’s voice burst through the channel, loud and furious, stepping over protocol like it didn’t exist. “Gallagher, you don’t—”
That was the moment Hollis stopped being in charge. Fly didn’t answer him. He switched channels, voice steady, controlled, absolute. “Valor’s captain is assuming on-scene command.”
The radio crackled with responses now. Other boats. Coast Guard acknowledgment. Authority moving where it mattered.
Fly lowered the handset and looked back to his crew. “We’re searching,” he said. Fly moved without raising his voice. “Throw flotation,” he said. “Everything that floats. Now.”
Bridge was already unhooking a cushion, hurling it over the side. Joss followed, tossing anything buoyant within reach. A splash, then another. Bright markers against dark water.
Fly kept Valor’s bow into the wind and marked the last place Mei had been with his eyes, then with his body, holding position just long enough to orient before easing the tiller.
The bay had changed its mind again, swell pushing sideways now, wind cutting across it, the surface confused and hostile.
“Eyes out,” he said. “Windward and down swell. Call anything. Anything.”
“Valor, Crimson Star. We are taking up a search grid.”
“Copy that, Star.”
They scanned.
Bridge on the leeward side, crouched low, eyes sharp and relentless, rain running off her hood in steady streams. Joss tracked the chop, counting the spaces between waves, though the rhythm had already begun to collapse, wind tearing the surface apart faster than the bay could settle it.
Than stood where Fly had put him, breathing hard, gaze locked on the water, wide and unblinking.
Fly turned Valor carefully, tight and controlled, bringing her back along the line the wave would have carried her.
The squall had swallowed the fleet.
Boats that had been scattered across the bay minutes ago were gone now, erased behind sheets of rain and blown spray. The wind had climbed another notch, gusting hard enough to shove Valor sideways between corrections, the tiller jerking against Fly’s grip.
He knew the math. Drift. Time. Wind pushing surface current faster every second. He hated knowing it.
Another gust hit, flattening the rain sideways. The water around them turned gray and boiling, wave crests breaking in different directions as wind and tide fought each other.
“Nothing,” Bridge called over the roar.
Joss shook his head, scanning the troughs between waves. “Can’t see ten yards.”
Fly held the course anyway, working the boat back and forth across the line where the rogue wave had struck, the search pattern shrinking with every minute the storm tightened its grip on the bay.
The water gave them nothing. Only rain and rising wind.
“Mei!” Joss shouted, voice tearing loose. “Mei!”
Fly didn’t tell him to stop. Sound carried. Sometimes it mattered.
He turned Valor across the drift line again, eyes burning from rain and salt as he searched every trough between waves.
“Mei!” Bridge shouted into the wind.
Nothing.
He brought the boat around and ran the line a second time, slower now, Joss counting the spaces between waves while Than scanned the gray water with wide, desperate eyes.
Still nothing.
They ran the pattern again and again.
The seconds stretched into long, grinding minutes. Long enough for hope to flare, falter, and begin quietly dying in their chests.
Fly adjusted course by inches, watching the water the way he always had, reading seams and shadows, places where something might surface. He felt the bay sliding past the hull, felt Valor answering, still honest, still fighting.
Still nothing.
The Coast Guard Cutter appeared at the edge of his vision, a helo overhead. Radios crackled with updates, coordinates passed clean and fast. Fly listened, processed, redirected when he needed to.
He never stopped looking.
The water gave nothing back.
Time lengthened, losing its edges. The bay rolled on, indifferent, carrying flotsam, carrying echoes, carrying nothing that looked like Mei.
Fly felt the shift before it had a name. The way the search stopped feeling forward moving and started feeling circular. The way the water closed ranks, smoothing over the violence like it had never happened.
He kept them searching anyway. A little longer. Then a little more.
Eventually, there was nothing left to adjust and they had been fighting the storm for nearly an hour.
Fly held Valor steady and stared at the empty water where hope had been moments ago, his chest tight, his hands steady on the tiller.
He didn’t say it as another hour passed.
Rain ran in steady streams off the boom and down the rigging, the wind driving it sideways across the bay until the water and sky blurred together. Valor rose and slammed through the confused chop again and again, every correction dragging harder on Fly’s shoulders.
His hands were numb on the tiller. Every muscle in his arms burned from holding the boat into the wind for another grueling hour.
Behind him the crew moved slower now, voices rough from shouting Mei’s name into rain that swallowed the sound almost as soon as it left their mouths.
The bay had already answered, but they ran the line again anyway.
Bridge leaned out over the rail, scanning the boiling gray water. Joss counted the troughs between waves, searching each one as it rose. Than stood rigid and silent, staring so hard at the water it hurt.
Nothing surfaced, nothing moved. They widened the pattern once, then again.
But the storm kept tightening, pushing Valor sideways, stealing distance faster than they could search it.
Eventually there was nothing left to adjust.
The search didn’t end.
It thinned.
Boats held position instead of moving forward. Radios dropped to shorter updates, voices lower, more careful with words. The water stopped being interrogated and started being watched.
Fly felt it settle into him without permission.
He eased Valor into a slow hold, bow still into the wind, keeping her steady while the bay rolled past with dark, relentless swells. The cushions they’d thrown drifted farther out now, bright and useless, marking a place that no longer mattered.
Bridge lowered herself onto the deck, arms wrapped around her knees, eyes still scanning even as her focus slipped.
Joss stood rigid, hands clenched on the rail, staring so hard it looked like he might burn a hole through the surface.
Than hadn’t moved. He stood exactly where Fly had left him, soaked, shaking, gaze fixed on the water with a kind of quiet that scared Fly more than noise would have.
Fly waited for something inside himself to break. What came instead was a cold, exact certainty. The math had finished running. Drift and time had intersected, then passed each other without touching.
Static cracked over the radio before the Coast Guard’s voice cut through the storm, ordering all civilian vessels out of the search area.
Fly breathed in, slow and controlled, and let the reality settle where it would have to live from now on. Deep. Permanent.
The conditions were worsening, and the authorities weren’t taking any more chances.
Had rescue become recovery?
He didn’t say the words. He simply adjusted Valor a fraction to hold position and kept his eyes on the water, as if she might still give something back if he stayed ready enough.
He stayed at the helm, hands steady, shoulders squared, holding the boat and the moment together because someone had to, and because letting go would change nothing.