Ghost Sub полностью

The Louisville’s executive officer was in the ship’s tiny office, using their sole photocopier to duplicate the watch bill he’d just authored. He picked one up as it came off the machine and suppressed a narrow smile as he looked over the page, still warm from its creation.

He was the second-in-command of the boat, charged with many administrative responsibilities, including the approval and publication of the watch bill. Commander Michaels had even less patience than most captains for administrative drudgery, and was happy to delegate it all to his meticulous XO, who was skilled with spreadsheets and PowerPoint in a way he would never be with torpedoes. He read the watchbill again, to make sure Lieutenant Danny Jabo was exactly where he wanted him.

You may have a Navy Cross, he thought to himself. And maybe the admiral knows you by name. But I still control the watch bill. Once it was published, the captain wouldn’t second guess him on this.

The XO had been solidly in the middle of the pack at every early stage of his career: 253^rd in his class at the academy, barely in the top half at nuclear power school, and slightly worse at prototype. But this is why he had made it to XO, clawing ahead of so many peers that had once been deemed more promising. And this is why he would make it to captain: he was good at this. He had the careerist equivalent of good eye-hand coordination, a sense for which way the wind was blowing, a knack for saying what superior officers wanted to hear even before they knew they wanted to hear it. And he knew that if Danny Jabo was the captain’s favorite officer in the wardroom, then he couldn’t be. And he was at a critical stage in his career, just one step to go before taking command of a ship himself, the pinnacle of a naval officer’s career, getting his twenty years in, and retiring with a captain’s pension.

And now the XO’s fate was solely in the hands of the mercurial Commander Michaels, and the fitness report he would issue at the end of this tour. Any praise that was less than completely glowing, any superlative that was remotely qualified, might doom him. The Cold War was over, and with so many boats decommissioned, and so few new ones being built, there weren’t that many commands to go around. Careers were sacrificed every day because of an adverb misplaced or the absence of an adjective in a fitrep. The XO sensed that any praise lavished on Danny, bona fide naval hero, would be taken from him. So Lieutenant Jabo needed to come back down to earth.

He didn’t think it would be hard. Danny seemed uncomplicated in that way, non-political in a manner that probably made him endearing to others, easy to like. But as a result, he’d never see the XO coming. He’d never outmaneuver a guy like the XO when his career was on the line.

As he congratulated himself on his cunning, the copier made a grinding noise, and one of the green lights on the control panel turned red. Agitated, the XO threw open the access plate and saw where the paper had jammed. He grabbed the edge of the offending sheet and pulled, but the machine held onto it tight. With two hands, he pulled again, hard. He heard a snap and the sheet came free, as every light on the machine briefly turned red, and then its internal systems shut everything down to save itself from further damage. He smelled the sweet aroma of melting plastic. The XO jabbed the power button over and over, but nothing happened.

He had killed the copier.

Danny was walking out of his stateroom when he saw a gaggle of junior officers, including V-12, gathered around the bulletin board, peering at the new watch bill. A few glanced at him as he approached and stepped over to make room.

He scanned it until he found his name. It was under V-12’s.

“What the fuck?”

V-12 laughed. “I guess I’m supposed to teach you how to be an EOOW.”