//There are errors in these first few chapters from before I began italicizing thoughts. I will be fixing those at some point.

Somewhere in international waters, Devan Williamson was zoning out on the bridge of the Presidential, the "flagship" of this figuratively (and sometimes literally) duct taped-together flotilla. He was technically Commodore Devan Williamson, as far as InterCons was concerned. He was unsure of how exactly he ended up in this position, but here he was.

Unfortunately, despite his role, there often wasn't much for him to do. More of his life than he would like was spent writing reports for more senior management and participating in meetings about what items were in most need of maintenance. "Most need" because pretty much everything needed it. Hardly any of these ships were bought new.

At least the group was unique.

This flotilla was effectively a city on the water. Originally, these ships were everything from retired cruise ships to oil tankers. InterCons repurposed and modified them for its own needs. The cruise ships stayed largely the same; they're just used as residential or office space. On the other end of the spectrum are the three oil tankers InterCons decided to build simple oil refineries on. They don't have the number or complexity of processes found in onshore refineries, but they can produce more than enough fuels for his flotilla. What isn't used or stored here is sent ashore either for sale or further processing.

Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Devan seems to remember something from a meeting with the CEO about him wanting the flotilla to be as self-sufficient as possible. He figures this is the reason they have the refinery ships.

Suddenly, Devan is ripped out of his thoughts by a sudden alarm sound. "Great. What's broken now?" he asks.

There's a several-second pause before one of the lieutenants replies, "A lot all of a sudden. Today just ain't a good day--knew it since I woke up this morning."

"You haven't gone a day without calling it a bad one for the last five months."

"Anyway, apparently we've lost GPS and satellite communication, at least."

"Both just now? Huh."

Devan radioed to several other ships in the flotilla. All responded that their GPS and satellite communications had just gone down as well.

"How is that possible? Have all satellites just decided to stop working?" Devan ponders out loud.

"Maybe they adopted our maintenance model," the same lieutenant joked.

"Not the time. Something's gotta be up, but what?"

//Just a quick note from the author: I know this first chapter is very short, but new chapters should be around or over 2000 words each.