“Chief of the Watch, get Chief Yaksic to control.”
The chief of the watch was already sending the messenger to the goat locker; like any good COW he’d been eavesdropping and anticipating. “He’s on his way, sir.”
A whoop on the panel and a blinking red alarm light caught the COW’s eye.
“Number one oxygen generator is shut down on high voltage,” he said.
Motherfucker thought Jabo. His blood started pumping and he started running through procedures in his mind, aligning priorities, trying to figure out what the fuck was going to happen next, and what he could do about it.
Petty Officer Howard made a slight adjustment to the voltage of the number one oxygen generator, and waited a moment to verify that the individual cell voltage was drifting back down. Since they’d started up the machine that afternoon after the drills, voltage had been edging high again, a tendency that had worsened in recent days. He’d calculated in his head that he had just enough time to complete a round of logs before getting back to the machine and adjusting it, lest its own protective systems shut it down because of the excessive voltage. The machine needed maintenance, real maintenance, with contractors, engineers, and work plans. But that would probably have to wait until they were in port, if not dry dock. In the meantime, it was his job, for six hours at a time, to keep it running.
The oxygen generators were some of the most advanced, most temperamental, and most important machinery on the boat. They manufactured breathable oxygen from the only raw material that the submarine had unlimited access to: water. Using high voltage electricity, the generators ripped the H2O of water into its constituent parts: hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen was pumped overboard and the oxygen was either piped into the boat or stored in banks for later usage. But the net result of this giant exercise in basic water chemistry was a machine that combined high voltage electricity with high pressure cells of two of nature’s most explosive gasses. Which is why most men on the boat routinely referred to the oxygen generator as “the bomb,” and why almost every oxygen generator in the fleet had hanging somewhere near it a picture of the Hindenburg.
It was Howard’s skill at running the oxygen generators, he knew, that had kept him away temporarily from the green table — captain’s mast — and whatever variety of punishments awaited him for the dryer fire. The captain and XO wanted to take him to mast, which would, at the very least, mean he would have to re-qualify every watch station. And probably worse: he might lose rank, he might lose money, he might even be kicked off the boat. Shit, who knows — they might even send him to the brig. He’d gotten a recent free pass for his DUI, so he was not expecting leniency. Even if he knew that he was not at fault for the fire.
But they had to keep Howard on the watchbill for now because of the oxygen generators. Only two other men were qualified to run them. If they busted him, they’d have to go port and starboard in machinery two, meaning each watchstander would have to stand an exhausting cycle of six hours on watch, six hours off watch, instead of the normal three-section watchbill of six on, twelve off. Apparently, the captain and XO didn’t want to have the oxygen generators, along with the other crucial atmosphere control equipment in the space like the burners and the scrubbers, tended by exhausted men. So they’d reluctantly delayed Howard’s punishment. Howard knew he was lucky — Captain Shields was a merciful man. Merciful to him, merciful to the men who would stand port and starboard in his absence. Captain Soldato would have done the opposite, would have taken him to mast the night of the fire, busted him, screamed at him, and laughed as they racked his shipmates and gave them the good news that they were six on and six off for the rest of patrol because of Howard’s fuck up.
So Howard was determined, absolutely determined, to stand each watch flawlessly. That, combined with the passage of time, might make whatever sentence they eventually passed on him a little more lenient. And his secret hope: if enough time passed, maybe he would find out what actually started the dryer fire. Although, certainly, he was the only person on the boat that thought the crime was unsolved. He’d been working on it, writing down what little information he had, a few thoughts about the possibilities, trying to piece it altogether before they finally got around to hanging him. He kept his notes on two neat sheets of yellow notebook paper, and when he was on watch they were on his clipboard, directly behind his logs, so he could record his ideas as they occurred to him, points of data that, when fully assembled, would prove his innocence.
As he finished tweaking the oxygen generator back into compliance, it was that clipboard he grabbed, ready to take another perfect round of logs in machinery two, a small step on the road toward redemption.
He started on the level he was in, third level, taking logs on all the operating machinery. No burners were running, but, oddly, two scrubbers were. This despite the fact that carbon dioxide was at zero, because of the recent ventilation. He finished his round of logs on both machines, noted the high but appropriate temperature of each: both were running perfectly, if needlessly.
He descended the ladder to Machinery 2 Lower Level. In addition to the machinery that concerned him as a watchstander, it was also home to the ship’s modest complement of exercise equipment. But no one was working out — with the tempo they were operating everyone was too tired to exercise. It was too bad, it was nice having the company down there, made the watch go a little faster to watch someone else using the space recreationally, even if he was at work. It depended on the person, of course.
During the first hour of the watch, the navigator had come aft to work out, wearing faded blue USNA gym shorts and a plain white T-shirt stretched across his bony shoulders. Howard caught himself staring at the pink, starburst-shaped scar on the nav’s knee, from when he’d stabbed himself with the dividers in controclass="underline" that story had rapidly become legend with the crew, further evidence that craziness was tolerated among officers. It was another example of Captain Shields’s willingness to give second chances; rumor had it that the XO wanted to throw the nav off before his knee had scabbed over. The navigator had caught him staring at the scar and Howard quickly averted his eyes and finished his logs. He made note of the nav’s presence in the same section of the logs he would have recorded the smell of smoke, flickering lights, or mysterious rattles that might give away their position to the enemy.
Howard saw gratefully, upon descending to lower level for the second time, that the navigator had already gone. He stood at the bottom of the ladder and took the emptiness in, true solitude being unusual on the boat. He realized he was staring at the deck, zoned out in a way that surprised him: he was actually relatively well-rested. He shook his head to clear the cobwebs, then lifted a deck plate to check the level of water in the bilge, one of the entries on his logs.