That could have been the Carnival Triumph’s motto for the last few days. “We will take them in.” What had started as a routine visit on one of Carnival’s “special” cruises had quickly turned into something else. The visit to Hamilton had been a familiar trip, one where Olsen had captained a variety of cruise liners over the years. The last visit had included a new innovation, a quick trip through Hellgate Beta that gave access to Naval Base Hell-Bravo so the passengers could truly say that they’d been to Hell and back. That one had gone smoothly if one excluded the red dust that had covered the superstructure and been – literally – hell to clean off.

This one had been different. The weather picture had started the same as usual, the familiar procession of low pressure areas marching across the South Atlantic. Mostly they either were dissipated by windshear or faded away. Only a few would reach the standard of a tropical storm and fewer still would gain the status of a fully-fledged hurricane. Few indeed, but one of them had, it had started to swing north, taking it over the warm waters of the South Atlantic, picking up strength as it went. The hurricane chasers had plotted its path and projected it would make landfall somewhere in Georgia as a Category Two or, just possibly a Category Three. They had named it Hurricane Paloma and the WP-3s and satellites had kept a close eye on it. It was lucky they did, because it had made an unexpected northwards swing and picked up speed. So much so that Bermuda had received only a few hours warning that the storm was inbound and that its strength was unprecedented.

Olsen remembered those few hours vividly, fortunately the shore excursions hadn’t started so all the passengers were still onboard. Instead of taking the ashore, the ship’s boats had been used for a frantic evacuation of the inhabitants of Hamilton, all 1,500 of them. To make it possible, Olson had brought his ship dangerously close inshore and dropped scrambling nets over the side. He’d got the refugees on board and then, with the winds already howling round him and the rain coming down in sheets, Carnival Triumph had fled for the Hellgate and shelter.