The Needs of the Navy come foremost when it comes to stationing personnel. That rang in Vice-Admiral Nakamura's mind as he looked over at the large house on a bare lot stuck in the boondocks called Moonlight Falls. Just two weeks earlier he'd been stationed at the Pentagon as one of the flag-staff of the Chief of Naval Operations and he was on track for his fourth star at the next Congressional nominations for "admiral". He had thought he was on a fast-track assignment to the CNO's chair once the current CNO vacated his position (another phrase for retired).
But then the call came in and he was told, "We need you to find out what's going on in Moonlight Falls, there's been news out of the ordinary. If what they're telling us is true, we're going to get ourselves overrun with werewolves and the undead. and that's not something the President wants to hear. We want you and five of your best to go out there and investigate what's going on and report back to us. That way we know whether or not we have to send the military in there to settle things down." That was another military term, it meant that they'd send in special forces and basically eradicate the town of any thing and anyone that looked suspiciously as though they were occult.
Well, this definitely was a test, to see if he had the wherewithal to figure out the next move - to strategize and solve a problem. And if there was an outbreak of the occult, it was a military problem. The military brass seemed to think that there was nothing that couldn't be solved by liberal usage of .556 NATO blasting holes in anything that looked suspicious and moved. There was another old military saying, "If it moves, shoot it until it stops moving."
But at least he was stuck here with five of his best friends in the military. He looked over at the five and shrugged his shoulders and said, "Well, looks like we're going to have to make the best of this situation." Three of them were JAGs, one of them was his old squadron-mate and then there was Phil. Holy geez...he was going to be fun to regulate. Phil had the attitude that he knew what the hell he was doing and consequence be dammed, he was going to do it his way. Plus on top of that he was a few fruit-loops short of a full bowl. Yeah, Insanity was fun...especially for Phil. Considering the fact that he also talked to himself, at least he'd never be lonely.
Well, the first thing was to blend into the community, or at least try to as much as six military officers could do. First of all, for the males, their haircuts would instantly peg them as military, but there was nothing that they could do about that. They were still under the auspices of Navy Uniform Regulations, but at least they could stay out of uniform as much as possible. So, as ordered, Mac and Meg decided to check out the Elixir shop just to see what was going on, Kimber decided to go get groceries. After all they still needed to eat and well, if they didn't they'd soon find out that they wouldn't be able to keep up their surveillance. When the three women got back, Kimber and Mac set about cooking. Kimber decided to make Autumn Salad, since with no cooking skill, she wasn't about to turn their only living area into a blazing inferno. Mac on the other hand, used the baking oven to bake up some cinnamon rolls, which would be a pleasant aside to rabbit food, at least until some of them had enough skill to be able to cook up a dish using bleeding chunks of deceased mooing animal.
The Vice-Admiral and Harmon Rabb Jr. decided that they were going to go fishing; it was the manly thing to do. So being manly men, the two went out and stood around in the blazing heat for five or six hours, running the risk of dehydration and heat-stroke to toss a line in the water and wile away the time waiting for something to bite, though preferably not by a snake in the grass. Pythons had plenty of teeth and though non-venomous, they were known to inflict severe wounds that could get infected easily necessitating a run to the hospital. And of course there was one brainless snake importer that ended up having a crate of Malayan Kraits go missing...and evidently they'd escaped establishing a breeding colony. That was friggin' joyful. Malayan Kraits were known to be highly venomous and the only thing that could safely corner and capture them were cats. They were something that you sold off quickly, not because you wanted to make money off them. It was that they were bipolar-psycho. In the daytime, they were generally placid and not prone to biting, but come sundown, holy jumpin' jehosephat, they turned into psychotic nope-ropes and envenomation by one of them would be a one-way ticket to the morgue. Vietnam Veterans used to call kraits, "two-step" snakes. If you were bitten by one, you took two-steps and keeled over dead. So they were very careful about where they placed their feet.
Meanwhile, Phil, on the other hand, was up to his shoulders in reconstituted food waste trying to pick out items that he could sell or clean up and utilize as furniture. Of all the things the Navy did; was stick them in the middle of no-where with nothing but beds, kitchen appliances, and several washrooms. And they got an expense account, that they were only to use for emergency purposes. Considering the temperature was 84.2F...in Moonlight Falls (which is hot for someplace close to the mountains), that food was not sticking around...and it turned into the most rancid smells that Phil's olfactory senses had ever known. And if he had to keep rummaging around in the dumpster, he soon have a reunion with the inner contents of his stomach.
By this time, it was a little past "high-noon" roughly about 1:18PM and the sun was beating down mercilessly. So far, Harm had managed to snag a goldfish, a minnow and a rainbow trout. All of which would go into the fridge to keep it from rotting. Vice Admiral Toshio Nakamura had caught a minnow and two goldfish. So they decided to keep fishing. Besides the admiral wasn't going to go home without a trout, the risk of dehydration - it was nothing. Since they were both anglers, Tosh and Harm were able to catch fish rather readily, however, Harm appeared to be gaining skill a lot faster in fishing, than the admiral.
Both Kimber and Meg were reading cooking skill books to be able to cook for the men who were going out to hunt for stuff, whether it be fish, or foul junk. At least they would come home to good meal. But the women also had other tasks to do too. Their jobs would be to reconnoiter the shops and see if they could find out any information on the occult. And the men would take the riskier recon missions, the ones involving contact with the occult: meaning armed and violent conflict.
As it was, the house was bare bones. There wasn't really a piece of furniture in the house. All of that would have to be scrounged around. They weren't to touch the account unless it was for food or emergency purposes. So anything that they were to use in order to furnish the house would have to be found and repurposed or sold if it didn't meet their tastes. Frankly the Navy gave them the bare minimum that they needed to survive their assignment; creature comforts were not a priority. So whatever they needed to provide their rear-ends with some comfort were going to have to be taken care of by the six officers' ingenuity.
So...they were resigned to the fact that they were told by the Navy to plant their rear-ends in Moonlight Falls until otherwise ordered.
No comments:
Post a Comment