Sea of Shadows

joking. As the captain’s second-in-command, the XO was charged with making sure that the ship operated in accordance with the captain’s orders and policies. One of those policies involved ensuring that junior officers were never— never late for meetings.

Especially not meetings that had been called by the captain.

Due to the oddities of the Navy command structure, that put Chief McPherson in a bit of a predicament, her Division Officer, Mr. Cooper, was a brand-spanking-new ensign (as were most other Divo’s). He was a commissioned officer, albeit a very junior one, and that made him Chief McPherson’s boss. She was required to follow his orders, despite the fact that she had nearly twenty years of experience, and he had virtually zero.

Ensign Cooper was a hard-charger and a quick learner, but he was also young and very wet behind the ears. By naval tradition, the chief was expected to train her own boss and mold him into a good officer, which made her responsible for his actions, even though she was his subordinate.

A good chief petty officer, it was reasoned, could use knowledge and experience to guide a young officer into correct action — which ultimately meant that the XO would kick Chief McPherson’s ass up around her shoulder blades if her boss didn’t show up for the captain’s meeting on time.

She stifled the urge to look at her watch or the door again. “My Fearless Leader will be here, sir. Count on it.”

The door opened again, but it wasn’t Ensign Cooper. Lieutenant Alan West, the Supply Officer, walked in and took the chair closest to the coffeepot.

Now Chief McPherson did look at her watch. Her boss had about three minutes. She was just about to get up and use the phone to try to track him down when the door opened and Ensign Cooper walked in.

As soon as the ensign found a chair and pulled it up to the table, the XO cleared his throat. “Ah, Captain. We’re ready to begin.”

Captain Bowie looked up from his paperwork and scanned the group of men and women seated around the table. “Where’s the Chief Engineer?”

“The CHENG is down in Main Engine Room number one,” the XO said. “The engineers are finishing up the installation on the new fuel oil purifier, and he’s overseeing the work. I told him he could take a pass on the meeting, and I’d catch him up later.”

The captain digested this bit of information for a few seconds. Then he shook his head. “Sorry to second- guess you, Pete, but I need him up here for this.”

The XO nodded. “Yes, sir.” He stood up and walked to the phone.

* * *

A couple of minutes later, the Chief Engineer showed up, his coveralls streaked with grease. He nodded toward the captain. “Sorry I’m late, sir. I thought I had a get-out-of-jail-free card, but I guess I misplaced it.”

The captain waved him to a chair. “I’ll let you slide this time, but next time you’ll have to bring a note from your mom.”

Everyone chuckled politely.

The captain held up a hand for silence. “How many of you have been staying on top of the secret message traffic?”

Every hand in the room went up.

“Good,” the captain said. “Then you all know what’s been going on with that wolfpack of German submarines.”

Everyone nodded, and there were gentle murmurs of assent.

“Excellent,” the captain said. He picked up a stack of papers and began passing copies around the table. “Because we’ve just received orders to form a Search Attack Unit with USS Benfold and USS Ingraham. We’ve been designated as commander for the SAU. You can read these at your leisure, but I’ll give you the short version for now. Our orders are to proceed south at all speed, intercept the German submarines, and destroy every one of them.”

The Supply Officer accepted his copy of the orders and stared blankly at it. “Sir? Are we at war with Germany?”

“Not yet, SUPPO,” the captain said. “And maybe not at all. This may be an isolated reprisal for the attack on the Kitty Hawk strike group.

“What I want right now is an up-to-the-minute status report. Are we ready for this? What equipment is broken? Which systems are degraded?” He turned to the Chief Engineer. “You first, CHENG. If we can’t drive, we can’t fight. What’s the latest on the engineering plant?”

“The engines are in top shape,” the CHENG said. “So are the generators. Prairie Masker is looking good. The installation on One Alpha Fuel Oil Purifier is about ninety percent complete. With a little luck we’ll have it back on line in a couple of hours.” His eyebrows narrowed slightly. “I’m not crazy about the compressor on air conditioning plant number three. I haven’t ordered a sound survey yet, but the A-Gang Chief says he thinks it’s running a little loud. I’ve listened to it, and I think he’s right. If we can’t get it back within specs, we may have to shut it down entirely before we can set Silent Ship.”

The captain scribbled a note. “Number three AC feeds enlisted berthing aft, doesn’t it?”

The Chief Engineer nodded. “Yes, sir.”

“The ambient air temperature is over a hundred degrees,” the captain said. “If we have to shut three AC down for long, aft enlisted berthing will become an oven. I don’t want the crew sleeping down there when it gets like that.”

“It will be uncomfortable, sir. But the crew can learn to live with it.”

“I’m sure that’s true,” the executive officer said. “But it’s hard to sleep when it gets that hot. And when the crew loses sleep, they make mistakes.

We’re about to take on a pack of hostile submarines that have stomped the shit out of every surface ship that has crossed their path. Mistakes are something we cannot afford.”

“I agree,” the captain said. He looked at the Supply Officer. “SUPPO, make sure the engineers get whatever parts they need to fix that compressor. And if they need something we don’t carry on board, send out a logistics request, and we’ll have it sent out by helo. We just jumped to the top of the Navy’s logistics priority list.” He looked around the table.

“All of you, get your wish lists to the SUPPO before evening chow. It just became Christmas on Happy Warship Towers, and the Navy supply system has been designated as your official Santa Claus.”

The captain looked at the XO. “Pete, assign one of our bright junior officers to come up with a plan for moving the enlisted personnel out of aft berthing, just in case we can’t get three AC to play right.”

The XO nodded. “Sounds like a good job for the Admin Officer.”

Lieutenant (jg) Augustine made a thumbs-up gesture. “Piece of cake, sir. We can spread the personnel out to other berthing spaces with empty racks. Move a few into officer and chief petty officer overflow berthing.

If worse comes to worst, we can drag mattresses and sheets down to some of the electronics spaces. Those spaces are nice and chilly.”

“Good,” the captain said. “Now, OPS, what have you got for me?”

The Operations Officer looked up from his copy of the new orders.

“Operations department is clean and green, Captain. The biggest problem I have to report is a sticky cipher lock on the starboard door to CIC. Other than that, we’re just ducky.”

“Just ducky,” the Combat Systems Officer said under her breath in a mocking tone. “We’re just ducky here. Ducky, I tell you.”

“You’re next, CSO,” the captain said. “You’re the one with all the cool bullets and bombs. What’s broke and what ain’t?”

The Combat Systems Officer sighed and consulted her palm-top computer. “We’ve got that bad Tomahawk in VLS cell twenty-two.

Should be zero tactical impact, at least while we’re hunting submarines.

The Aegis backup computer has a bad high-volt power supply. Tactical impact is just loss of a redundant system. Supply department has a replacement on board, but we’ve been holding off, because we don’t have sixty thousand dollars left in this quarter’s repair budget. But if we really do have a blank check for parts, we can draw the new power supply from stores and have the backup computer on line in less than an hour.” She used a plastic