Jesus Christ, he thought, he’s literally trying to kill me with a procedure.
He moved for the valve again now, when behind him he heard the familiar sound of a .45 ratcheting.
“Don’t move, Petty Officer Lehane.”
He turned to see Dwyer pointing a service .45 right at his head.
“Sir, we have to shift control… Baer is in shaft alley, he’s ready to drive us up.”
“Not without an order from the captain.”
“Sir…”
“Move toward that valve again and I’ll kill you.”
Lehane felt himself growing weak, he didn’t know how much longer he could stand. He needed to cough but was afraid the movement might cause Dwyer to shoot. Dwyer still had his EAB on, it was hissing at him as he breathed hard. Even sick and weak, Dwyer couldn’t miss if he shot him: the control room was too small.
Suddenly the OOD coughed hard, and the inside of his EAB mask was covered in a thick coating of blood.
Lehane seized the opportunity, lunging sideways as the OOD squeezed off a blind shot; it hit the dead diving officer squarely between his shoulder blades with a thump. Lehane jumped on Dwyer as he stumbled backward from the recoil. The gun flew out of his hand.
Lehane punched him once, fought the urge to do more damage to the officer who had just moments before tried to kill him. But the OOD was weak; that shot was clearly one of his last acts. Dwyer laid flat on his back, gurgling on his own blood, and Lehane didn’t think he could hurt him anymore.
He turned back toward the ship control station and lurched toward the valve again. He was wracked by coughing as he went. He found the valve, and between coughs, he pushed in the safety lever, and turned the valve ninety degrees. He slumped to his knees and watched the stern planes indicator.
Nothing happened. They remained at zero degrees as the ship, oblivious to all the chaos inside her, steamed steadily onward.
He waited a few seconds, realized that his friend Baer was dead now too. He started coughing again, knew he was very near the end. He took the valve in his hand again, shifted control back to the control room. He would drive the ship up himself. He pushed Diaz aside and started to get in his seat, but he could no longer maneuver at all. Violent coughs consumed what was left of his energy.
He put both hands on the stern planes, remembered that the autopilot was still engaged. He turned to deactivate it. Lehane passed out as he reached for the control panel. He died ten minutes later.
There was one man left.
Seaman Luke Winn was sound asleep in his rack, that small rectangle of private space the ship had allotted him. He’d gone to bed with the permission of the benevolent Chief Zimmerman, between the jobs of painting and washing dishes in the scullery. He was deeply exhausted, and that fatigue, combined with the gentle motion of the ship as it went to sea, sent him into a deep, dreamless sleep.
When he awoke, he felt more rested than he had in days, happy to his core, deeply grateful to his chief, his chain of command, and to the United States Navy for taking mercy on him and granting him a few hours of much-needed sleep. He thought for a moment how odd it was to be at sea. It was something he’d anticipated, wondered and worried about, for months. At bootcamp he’d imagined his first departure as a dramatic moment, with brass bands playing and waves crashing. Instead he’d slept through the whole thing — and that didn’t bother him at all. Instead, a bolt of optimism shot through him about the adventure he’d just begun, a feeling that had been hard to get in touch with while he was covered in paint in the torpedo room bilge. He was underway on a nuclear submarine! It was weird and cool and something no one else in his high school class could say.
He looked at his watch, pushing the button to light up the blue digital numbers in his tiny pocket of dark space. Panic shot through him: he’d slept for four hours! He was two hours overdue in the scullery. Why had no one come to wake him? How much trouble was he in?
He jumped out of his rack, quickly stepped into his uniform and jammed his feet into his boots, furious at himself. He jumped through the curtain of the berthing compartment and into the fluorescent passageway, half expecting to see Chief Zimmerman charging toward him.
He nearly tripped over a dead body at his feet.
Further up the passage way, he saw another.
The ship’s machinery around him hummed with electricity and purpose, but he couldn’t hear a human sound of any kind.
“Hey!” he yelled, hoarse from sleep. He cleared his throat and yelled again. “Injured man!”
No one responded.
He walked carefully forward, stepping over each body in turn. He passed another berthing area where he saw a man hanging halfway out of his bunk, his face contorted in pain.
