—Dr. Samuel Johnson MV Richard Bland, Laccadive Sea, southeast of the Maldives Even from the top of the superstructure, no land was in sight. Neither were there any ships of any size. There were a couple of fishing boats, small things, probably family owned and operated. But those were far away and hard to see. There might have been satellites overhead, thus the aviation mechanics worked their birds—all of which had seen some pretty hard use at Bajuni—under double tarps, stretched out between the containers that formed walls on a lower, open area. Even without the chance of a satellite overhead, the tarps would still have been doubled. If they hadn’t, the maintenance area would have been an absolute oven. As was, with the breeze from the forward motion of the ship, it really wasn’t bad. The tarps wouldn’t necessarily protect the gunships and CH-750’s from observation, but it would probably take a human being to dial up the requisite filters to spot them, not a mere computer program.
