Free Under a Tell-Tale Sky: Disruption - Book 1 by R.E. McDermott Page B

you where you’re going in no time.”
    Levi looked doubtful. “I considered coming down the Brunswick, but I’ve never run that section of river and I’ve heard there are a lot of side channels. I was concerned we might get lost or delay—”
    “The harbor chart shows the river system and side channels, even though they’re not navigable by ship. I’ll give you a copy. I’ve got an old one aboard.”
    “Thanks, I’d appreciate that, but I’m still not taking Singletary. I don’t really know him and he seems to have an attitude. I’m not going to risk it. Sorry, Captain.”
    “C’mon, Levi. He just wants to get back to Baltimore. He’ll be out of your hair in a day or two, just like Tex and Wiggins. He IS a shipmate after all. We can’t just dump him ashore and abandon him.”
    Levi sat silently for a moment. He had a bad feeling about this, but he didn’t think he could refuse in good conscience, and he had already been thinking of how to mitigate the risk of letting other people know about his hideaway.
    Levi sighed. “All right, I’ll take him if he wants to come.”
    “Good,” Hughes said. “Now about the food—I suppose you’ll want can goods and the like?”
    “Negative,” Levi said. “All the steward’s canned stores probably come in cans the size of five-gallon buckets. That’s okay when you’re feeding twenty people and have plenty of refrigerated space for leftovers, but it sucks when you’re traveling or have a small group with limited refrigeration capacity. We’ll want dry stores, pasta, rice, and dry beans.”
    “All right, how much of each?” Hughes asked.
    “A hundred pounds a person, four hundred pounds total, more or less evenly split between the various commodities,” Levi said without hesitation.
    Hughes just looked at him. “That’s a little much, don’t you think? I still have to feed the rest of the crew.”
    “And you’ll still have plenty of dry goods and all the canned goods and refrigerated food to do it,” Levi said. “We took on ninety days’ stores ten days ago in Texas, so you should be in pretty good shape. And you know as well as I do how much food normally gets wasted or thrown overboard, you can stretch it, especially with a reduced crew.”
    “So you’re sending Tex, Wiggins, and Singletary off with a hundred pounds of food strapped to their backs? C’mon, Levi, Tex probably doesn’t even WEIGH a hundred pounds,” Hughes said.
    “No, I’m going to send them off with the best mix I can find, including small packages of meat, jerky, and other calorie-dense stuff from our own stores, but I have to replace the CALORIES with something we can store long term and eat later. I’m also going to be taking other supplies out of my stores, like guns and ammo, medicine kits, etc. and I need to get that back somewhere.” Levi paused. “It’s a tough new world out there, Captain, and it’s going to get a lot tougher fast. You get nothing for nothing.”
    Hughes blew out an exasperated sigh and shook his head, and Levi reached down and began to dig in the pack sitting beside his chair. He had his hand on the vintage .38 revolver but hesitated. If he was going to have to take Singletary, getting the travelers equipped for the road might bite into his stores a bit more than he planned. He left the pistol in the backpack and pulled out the disassembled halves of a broken-down shotgun with a shortened stock and barrel and placed it on the coffee table, then dipped back into the bag for a full box of 20-gauge shotgun shells and placed it on the table beside the shotgun.
    “I figure you’re short on firepower, so I’ll throw this in to sweeten the deal,” Levi said.
    Hughes looked at the gun. “You know you just broke a bunch of federal laws bringing that aboard?”
    Levi smiled. “Why, you going to turn me in?”
    Hughes shook his head. “No, I’m going to take your deal, on one condition.”
    “I’ve already agreed to take Singletary, so this