Stung by the words, Holmes glared at Pete. “Looks like he was kicking your ass before you got to his gun.”
Pete shook his head, waiting for the memory to come back to him. “Maybe so,” he said.
Frank sneered at Pete’s lack of a comeback.
Moody guided Pete over to the computer screen where Holmes had been staring.
“Still there?” she said.
“Still,” said Holmes. “Always one to two miles behind us. Never maneuvering too close, never completely drifting away. I’m sure it was easy for them to track us during the fight, god knows there was plenty of noise.”
Hana turned toward Pete. “We still don’t know if she’s friend or foe, no way to tell. If she’s a Typhon boat, they’re still not making their move.”
Typhon. The word jolted Hamlin. He knew that Typhon was their enemy, one of the few distinct memories to return to him. But was the word an acronym of a foreign slogan? Part of a phrase made pronounceable for English speakers? A slur against all those who would kill them? Pete strained to remember but wasn’t sure he’d ever known.
“But if it’s Typhon, they made no move to attack us during the mutiny,” she continued.
“We should attack them first!” said Holmes.
Moody sighed impatiently. “What if that’s an Alliance boat? And they somehow got word about the mutiny? They may just be trying to determine if the mutiny succeeded or not, ready to blow us out of the water if they think we’re in the hands of the enemy.”
“Not if we get her first.”
“And then we’ve got every submarine out here after us: Alliance and Typhon. Stick to driving, Frank, and leave the thinking to us.”
Holmes turned red at the insult. “Hey, hotshot,” he said to Pete. “Why don’t you take the conn for a while? I’ve been up here for hours.”
Moody looked at them both, and nodded in approval.
“Sure,” said Hamlin, unsure what to do next. He stepped toward Frank, hoping that some knowledge of the task at hand would materialize. At least the mechanics of how to take the watch. But nothing came to him.
“Would you like to know our course and speed?” said Holmes after a moment, mocking him.
“Of course,” said Hamlin.
“Ship is on course two-four-zero, twelve knots, depth seven hundred feet,” he said. “Rigged for general emergency. The port nonvital bus is deenergized because of the fire in the motor generators. I’m guessing about half our lights are out. Sierra One, our shadow, is still behind us, about one mile abaft.”
“OK,” Hamlin responded.
Holmes looked at him in disbelief. “Did you just say ‘OK’?!” He looked to Moody for affirmation, and then back at Hamlin. “How about, ‘I am ready to relieve you’? That’s the customary phrase at this point.”
“I am ready to relieve you,” he said.
“No, you’re not,” said Moody, stepping forward suddenly. She looked him up and down impatiently. “You’re hurt worse than you look, aren’t you?”
“Maybe,” said Hamlin.
Holmes sighed loudly in disgust.
Suddenly Moody turned and slapped Holmes across the face, stunning them all. “I’ll relieve you, Frank, how’s that? Go belowdecks and eat, or read a comic book, or whatever it is you do in your free time, you weak son of a bitch.”
Holmes trembled in rage and shame.
“Go!” she said. “Now! I relieve you! I have the deck and the conn.”
Holmes stormed out of the control room, leaving the two of them standing there.
She stared at Pete with concern. “You always were tough,” she said. “Don’t risk the ship on it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She looked around to verify that no one else was in the control room, and leaned in. “I love it when you call me that,” she whispered in his ear.
She then stepped back. “Now get yourself to sick bay, Hamlin, and pull yourself together.”
He waited a moment before responding. “Yes, ma’am.”
Moody exhaled deeply as Hamlin walked out of the control room. Could she trust him? She’d seen the gun in his hand, seen Ramirez dead at his feet. Still, he seemed off, perhaps hurt worse than it appeared. She would ask the doctor after he’d had a chance to look him over; maybe he’d medicate him with something. If the drugs were good enough, maybe they could all use a dose. For now, she knew only the next step in the patrol order, the one thing the captain had shared with her, and he’d done that only when he had to. But it was a doozy: they were going to drive through the old Pacific degaussing range. Ever since she found that out, she’d been trying to figure out what it meant for the rest of their mission.
And she could only guess, because no one would tell her.
But now Hamlin wouldn’t have any choice. He would have to show her the complete patrol order so they could fulfill the mission. And Hamlin should trust her, shouldn’t he? She’d thwarted those two traitors, one of whom Pete himself had killed.
From the beginning, she hadn’t known what to make of him. Maybe it was a natural by-product of him being on the ship the least amount of time — a few weeks, when Frank, the next-newest crew member, had been onboard for two solid years, never stepping outside the hull that entire time. They all knew each other like one big dysfunctional family, living in a house with no windows that they could never leave.
But it was more than that: Pete was opaque. He wasn’t quite Alliance, and he wasn’t quite Navy. But the simple fact was now she had to trust him.
And surely he could see that she had only one goaclass="underline" the mission. And beyond that, the Alliance. It was all a big joke to McCallister and Ramirez, always had been, a punch line. The Alliance officers like her and Frank, with their coloring-book training and their in-depth knowledge of Alliance dogma. Moody could debate them into the ground about international politics. Unfortunately, on a submarine that had been on patrol for far too long, that was much less important than being able to keep a main feed pump working, or the generators going. At least in Captain McCallister’s eyes.
But that’s why she was here; that’s why the Alliance had put her onboard, made her second-in-command. Because she believed in the mission with the same kind of purity Ramirez had tried to get out of his roaring evaporators. From the cold murk of the ocean that surrounded them, he could produce water a thousand times cleaner than anything available on land, a requirement for his nuclear power plant. That’s what was required with ideology, too; it had to be even purer at sea than anywhere else, to hold up under the relentless pressure that constantly tested them all. Ramirez had never believed that, and neither had the captain. But now: she was in charge.
She looked down at the display and checked again for the two undeniable realities in their ocean at the present time: the next step of their mission, represented by the two bright, straight lines of the degaussing range fifty miles ahead. The lines were superimposed electronically on the screen, essentially drawn on by the computer. It was a motionless, silent structure that was invisible to their sonar, or anyone else’s. The bright lines on the screen conveyed certainty, but they were just the coordinates they’d inputted, a visual representation of where the range was supposed to be.
The upside-down V behind them on the screen represented less certainty, but was at least the result of real acoustic information, the thin but steady stream of noise that came to them from their shadow, the other submarine that had dogged them for days. Despite what she told Frank, she was certain she was a Typhon boat, based not only on her menacing posture but also on that noise: she was too loud to be an Alliance boat. A modern Alliance craft in their baffles like that would be silent and invisible. She sat down on the small foldout seat in front of the console, fiddled with the range, and realized for the first time how exhausted she was.